Unread 2.7 is available from the App Store. This update improves the experience of reading linked list articles and adds other improvements.
Improved Handling of Linked List Articles
A linked list article is an article consisting of a link to another article and a quote from or comment on that article. Linked list articles are often found on Daring Fireball, The Loop, MacStories, Pixel Envy, Six Colors, and TidBITS.
Each subscription now has three different webpage text setting values that can be applied to traditional articles and to linked list articles:
- Feed Text
- Webpage Text
- Both (Feed Text and Webpage Text)
When showing both, Unread will show the article content from the feed and the content from the linked article. When showing just feed text or webpage text for a linked list article, the swipe left menu will include a Feed & Webpage Text option.
Most articles from Hacker News are linked list articles. When Unread shows both feed and webpage text for a Hacker News article, you will see a link to the Hacker News comments page and the full article on one screen.
This update also incorporates these improvements around linked list articles:
- For new subscriptions and on new installations of Unread, Unread will now default to showing both feed and webpage text for linked list articles from some feeds.
- This update improves Unread’s heuristics around determining what articles are linked list articles. It also adds heuristics around determining the URLs of the original article and the linked article when not explicitly specified by the feed or relayed by the feed syncing service.
- When Unread can determine both the original article URL and the linked article URL, Unread will always use the URL of the original article for the share sheet and for article actions such as Instapaper. For example, when Unread determines that it is displaying a Daring Fireball article that links to another article, it will use the daringfireball.net URL for the share sheet and for article actions.
- When showing both feed and webpage text for an article, the Mail Article action now incorporates both feed and webpage text into the outgoing message.
- Unread will now remove images added to the feed text of Hacker News articles that are added by Inoreader. Such images will still be considered possible article list thumbnails.
Other Improvements
- Context menus for individual subscriptions and folders now include a Mark All Read item. You can use that to mark all articles for that subscription or folder read without opening the article list. This menu item is not available when syncing with a Fever account.
- This update incorporates improvements around finding article list thumbnails.
- Table cells in webpage text now have borders.
- Context menu items for subscriptions and folders are now available as accessibility rotor actions.
- This update adds minor improvements around the display of smaller images in articles.
- This update fixes a bug that could cause a crash when attempting to save a broken image to the photo library.
I am submitting a link to this announcement to Hacker News. The improvements in this update make the experience of following Hacker News much better. If you are excited about this update, please consider upvoting it on Hacker News.