Big features and new improvements have been added to Vocal this past week, including two of the most critical components: the database and the episode updates. While there are plenty of bugs remaining to be squashed, those two parts are now operational.

Check out the latest screencast

Although development this week has been primarily focused on those two features, additional bug fixing and polishing has been underway. The welcome screen text has been reworded to be more clear and concise. A new error message has been added when a feed cannot be parsed (as opposed to simply crashing). Overall, Vocal feels much more stable than it did just a week ago.

But there is still quite a lot of work to be done before an alpha or beta release will be available. I still need to add downloads, which also means adding local podcast file management. Additionally, I need to add OPML support so that you can transfer your subscriptions over to Vocal.

So stay tuned! We’re getting closer and closer to Vocal’s first public development release.