Since Mountain Lion’s release last week, some NetNewsWire customers who use network proxies have told us about crashes, usually at launch, but sometimes after as much as a few minutes of network activity.

Thanks to the helpful Friends Of NetNewsWire who contacted support and allowed us to test some theories on their computers, we’ve confirmed that this is a close cousin to crashes written about by Daniel Jalkut and AgileBits. Third-party apps are affected under 10.8.0, but we’ve also heard about similar trouble affecting Safari 6.

We believe the instability is affecting a few percent of our users, but it’s occurring too deep in the bowels of the networking stack to be fixable on our end, leaving us dependent on Apple to correct it in 10.8.1. However, disabling automatic proxy detection has thus far proven a successful workaround. If you’re seeing these crashes, here’s how you can put the fix into effect:

• Open System Preferences, and click Network
• Click the “Advanced” button in the lower right corner, with your favorite network interface selected
• Click the “Proxies” tab
• Uncheck “Auto Proxy Discovery” and “Automatic Proxy Configuration” (here’s a screenshot)
• Click “OK” to close the Advanced sheet
• Click “Apply” to update your network settings

Note, of course, that anyone whose network environment requires an automatically detected proxy server will be ill-served by turning this off. You could be solving the crash problem at the cost of breaking your internet access. This advice is intended as a short-term fix for people who’ve enabled proxy detection just in case, or who only need it part-time.

We apologize to anyone who’s being inconvenienced by this glitch, and we are eagerly anticipating a permanent fix from Apple.

NetNewsWire 3.3 for the Mac is here! The Black Pixel team has been hard at work to bring you Lion support—including fullscreen mode, which we really like. We’ve also fixed some issues affecting concurrency, stability and syncing with Google Reader. Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later required.

A huge thank you to our beta testers (including the ineffable Brent Simmons). And as always, please let us know if you have any trouble. Enjoy!

NetNewsWire 3.2.15 fixes a number of syncing bugs:

Fixed at least one cause of a bug where syncing could appear to get stuck. (It would sometimes start but not finish and the indicator would keep spinning.)

Fixed a bug where synced feeds wouldn’t get Growl notifications.

Fixed a bug where synced feeds that are suspended would get refreshed anyway.

Fixed a bug downloading enclosures for synced feeds.

Stop button now works for syncing in the Activity window.

Fixed a bug logging into Google Reader where it could lock up the UI.

As always, you can download it manually, or do a Check for Updates in NetNewsWire.

Macworld: NetNewsWire 4.0 Lite debuts in Mac App Store.

NetNewsWire Lite 4.0 is a new free version of NetNewsWire for Macintosh, available now on the Mac App Store.

It’s designed to be fast and light — and it’s definitely a Lite version in that it doesn’t have Google Reader syncing, tabs, Combined View and other features you might be used to. It does the basics, for folks who like their apps light and lean. (There will be a full version of NetNewsWire 4.0 with Google Reader syncing and other features.)

A couple of posts on inessential.com go into more details:

The Return of NetNewsWire Lite

Some Details about NetNewsWire Lite 4.0

Also see the The Making of NetNewsWire Lite 4.0, a photoset on Flickr.

Here’s a screenshot — click it for the larger version:

(There are more screenshots on its App Store page.)

Edit: 03/12 This application has been removed from the Mac App Store. 

Another quick update — NetNewsWire 3.2.14 fixes a bug where refreshing might appear to get stuck, especially after waking up the computer from sleep (though it was possible at other times too).

It also fixes a bug where subscriptions weren’t getting re-sorted after a refresh session.

Unfortunately, the app-update system may still change your news-items font size preference. This build contains the fix — but that fix won’t be able to work until the next update.

If you download it manually, you can avoid that font size reset. Or you can do a Check for Updates, get the new version, then go to preferences and restore your font setting.

While we try to avoid doing updates bunched together — two in one day — we found a hanging bug in NetNewsWire 3.2.12. It’s been fixed in 3.2.13.

(We’d rather fix it quickly, even it if means an update follows an update.)

To get the update, do a Check for Updates, or download NetNewsWire directly.