If you are using MS VWD 2008, it is possible to make your own changes to the News module. Open up the project in VWD2008, and add the references for the following dlls located in the folder where you put dnn \Website\Bin\: 

Yes, I agree, with the xsd contraints relaxed, the next issue of major importance to me is the cache process.  As it is now, and actually was in the old module just due to the nature of the beast, I would not place multiple instances on the same page.  I'd go a bit further and say I would not put the News module on the home page due to the lag in presentation.  Even the previous module had issues when a feed was not available, there just was not gracefull exit - just the ugly error message.

I seem to recall the FeedBrowser working in similar manner, of course you wouldn't put multiple instances of that module on the same page, but I think it's using the same approach of how it caches feeds.  I'll need to look, too.

Anyway, we're on the move now, and hopefully more folks can jump in to get this module where it needs to be.

Craig, Phil,

I have made a number of changes and I think I'm getting close to release. It would really help, given both of your background knowledge in the subject, if you could help out with testing. There are few testing resources here and this is in part the reason behind the issues we had with 04.00.00. Please find the relevant links to beta versions in this post:

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Forums/tabid/795/forumid/48/postid/257740/scope/posts/Default.aspx

I took the blog post of Craig to heart. It is not 'great' to read of course, but he's right. I have added 'background loading' to my own internal roadmap for this module. For now I'm concentrating on bug fixing and making sure all situations are handled adequately.

Cheers,

Peter