Here is how you can post to Windows Live Writer from GreatNews. Download this plugin and unzip into your GreatNews\Plugins directory, then config a GreatNews BlogThis tool with name LiveWriter.

Now under each articles BlogThis link you can use LiveWriter to post directly to Live Writer. Enjoy!

Update: Windows Live Writer plugin is now included in GreatNews setup/upgrade files. You don’t need to download it separatedly.

Kyles Cove suggested to add DiggThis to GreatNews. Given the popularity of Digg.com I should have added this feature long time ago. While I’m working on it, you can use the generic BlogThis feature in GreatNews to add DiggThis function. Definitely not optimal, but barely usable.
1. Goto Tools->Options->Features->Configure Blog Tools

2. Creat a new Blog Tool, and name it Digg This. The parameters are shown in the screenshot. The URL field is:
http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=%LINK%&title=%TITLE%&bodytext=%TEXT%

3. Save and close Options dialog.

Now under each article you will see a BlogThis link, click the Digg This menu you will be submitting the article to digg.com!

Thanks Kyles for the suggestion!

Michael Kizer published an article on how to create custom styles for GreatNews. It’s an excellent read if you want to create your own display style.

Randy did an excellent analysis on the survey result.

Despite of usual distraction of spring time Build 368 is out on time! Thanks to the fine folks from Zountry, GreatNews BlogThis tool now supports generic external tools for various tasks. To setup Zountry with GreatNews, please follow these simple steps. There are also many small usability enhancements like marking read/unread directly on reading pane, using quoted keyword in news watch, etc. This version has been released as nightly build for a while. I’m quite confident in its stability.

I spent some time early this month reviewing GreatNews issue tracking database. As you can imagine there are numerous feature requests and bug fixes. To prioritize tasks a little bit, I feel new functions in the following 3 categories should be implemented first:

1. Prioritize channels both automatically and manually
2. RSS enclosure(like podcasting) download and management
3. Offline reading and archiving capacity.

Stay tuned. GreaterNews is coming!

I cannot express enough how much I appreciate your efforts in translating GreatNews. So I think at least I can help making language pack update a little bit easier. GreatNews Language Pack Editor is now available. With Build 365 English language pack has been updated to match the latest code.

• To update a language pack, download build 365, start GreatNewsLngEditor.exe. Use File->Open Left to open gn_eng.ini, then use File->Open Right to open another language pack. The difference will be highlighted. Use Edit->Copy all new entries to right to duplicate new entries to right side.
• To create a new language pack, make a copy of gn_eng.ini, then translate the copy.

Shortly after Build 364 was published to public beta area, several users reported this build handles certain web links incorrectly when middle clicked on. I have put a new build 364 onto the server. The size of GreatNews.exe in this build is 1,400,832 bytes and was built at 3/3/2006 12:16AM.

If you find GreatNews can’t display some web pages on new tabs, please download and install Build 364 again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Michael Kizer posted a list of GreatNews keybord shortcuts. I thought this might be useful for other users too. Here’s an updated list:

In channel tree:

• F2 to rename a channel/group/watch/label directly on the tree
• Ctrl+click to switch channel w/o marking previous one as read
  

In news list:

• Ctrl + ENTER to open web page in new tab
• Shift + ENTER to open web page in external browser
• Mouse wheel click to open web page in current tab
• ENTER to open web page in current tab
  
• Double click to open article according to settings.
  

In reading pane:

• Ctrl+S to save current web page
• Ctrl+N to open current internet page in default browser
• Ctrl+F to find text on current page
  
• Ctrl+click to open link in new tab
• Shift+click to open link in external browser
• Ctrl+PageUp/Down to turn to previous/next page
• Ctrl+Tab to switch among tabs
• Ctrl+W / Ctrl+F4 to close a tab
• SPACE Bar will scroll, goto next page, go to next item etc depending on what you are reading. Scrolling mouse wheel at page bottom or scrolling mouse wheel holding right button works similiarly.

In menus:

• Ctrl+F - find text on this page
• Ctrl+H - search news item
• F3 - search next
• Ctrl+T - new tab
• F12 - maximize reading pane
• F7 - Next unread channel
• F8 - next unread group

Navigation:

• Tab/Shift+Tab to navigate among panels

GreatNews build 362 can use plugins to extend BlogThis funciton. A sample plugin to support w.bloggar is included with default installation. The source code of this sample is available here.

GreatNews plugins are regular windows dlls that export the following two functions:

LPCTSTR GetGreatNewsPluginName();
void BlogThis(LPCTSTR itemXml, LPCTSTR options);

where LPCTSTR itemXml is the news item and its channel in rss 2.0 format, and LPCTSTR options is the URL parameter set in BlogThis configuration dialog.

Very simple, right?

In case you don’t read release notes(I myself usually don’t…), GreatNews build 354 added ability to track comments automatically. If an article has comment feed, GreatNews will show “Track Comments” link like this:

If you click the link, GreatNews will start monitoring the article, and mark it as unread when new comments posted.

This function is enabled for new users by default. If you upgraded from previous version, you can enable it in Tools->Options->Features.

Enjoy!