I’ve been testing a pre-beta version of FeedDemon 2.0 for the past few days. With blessing from Nick Bradbury to blog about it, here’s what you can expect when the beta is released.

Note: Nick is moving features around a lot in these alpha builds so don’t be surprised if the release version looks a bit different.

In FeedDemon 2.0, say goodbye one-folder-at-a-time viewing, hello to tree-view:

Since FeedDemon now hooks into your subscription list on NewsGator’s server (by default) rather than making individual connections, syncing is very fast. Most of the time I don’t notice it happening. Another advantage of viewing feeds this way is you can now drag & drop feeds between folders.

In addition to the folder tree view above, you now have the option in the feed bar to see only those feeds that have unread articles. Unfortunately, you can’t keep feeds organized in folders when viewed this way so I rarely use it.

With a lot of feeds, it would be easy for the feed window to get unwieldy, but that doesn’t happen in FeedDemon 2.0 since there’s an option to "Automatically collapse folders". Only the folder with the feed(s) you’re looking at in the browser stay open. This makes it much easier to jump around between folders without losing your place in whatever folder you’re in. I have a lot of feeds and I never feel that my window is too cluttered.

The other big new interface change in FeedDemon 2.0 is the subscriptions overview. When you click on the "Subscriptions" header in the feed list (or select "Subscriptions Home" from the view menu or click on the button in the browser toolbar), instead of a newspaper view you get a tidy taste of your feeds:

It’s an instant snapshot of which feeds have unread or flagged articles (currently only available in alphabetical order), which feeds you pay the most attention to and which feeds you pay the least attention to. The "least attention" view is a good way to weed out those feeds which are just sitting there collecting dust.

If you click on a folder name in in the feed bar, you get a mini-overview of just that folder’s unread and flagged feeds:

A toggle in the upper right hand corner lets you switch between this overview and a newspaper view. If you’re viewing a newspaper you have the option to filter the article list in different ways:

The news item list (center panel) in FeedDemon is still available, but thanks to the filtering in the browser view it’s unnecessary now and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go away altogether at some point.

There are a bunch of other little fixes and tweaks to make this an upgrade worth having.

It took a little getting used to when I first started using FeedDemon 2.0, but after only 3 days I don’t think I can go back to 1.x. It’s a wonderful improvement. If you’re a cross platform user and you’re used to NetNewsWire, switching back and forth between FeedDemon and NetNewsWire won’t feel nearly as jarring as it used to.

Update: Known inbound links (in lieu of trackbacks for the moment):

• Nick Bradbury
• FeldThoughts