New apps don't seem to show in What's New

Hello Michael! Thanks for your report on this. Indeed, I can conform that these apps are not showing up correctly when you view What's New, even though the ones you mention have been published later than the apps that you *do* see there. This issue is a side effect of bug 803028. In summary, we have not been correctly tracking the actual *published dates* for the for-purchase items, with the result that the set of new apps for-purchase are grouped together in what is effectively a random ordering. And, since the What's New section list is limited to what should be the newest 20 items, then the new applications that you have noticed not appearing have not been appearing because they are simply falling off the bottom of the list due to the inaccurate ordering.

We have a fix in the works now (see attached branch and bug 803028) that will accurately track the times based on the actual published date for each for-purchase application, so apps will be sorted correctly with the very latest apps appearing first in the list, as they should be. This includes the books that you mentioned, as well as any and all apps that come along after.

Thank you again for reporting this!

This bug was fixed in the package software-center - 5.1.4

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software-center (5.1.4) precise; urgency=low

  [ Michael Vogt ]
  * lp:~brendan-donegan/software-center/test_debfileapplication,
    lp:~brendan-donegan/software-center/test_debfileapplication_mkII:
    - merged with some small tweaks to do basic tests for the
      DebFileApplication class, thanks to Brendan Donegan
  * data/software-center.menu.in:
    - add new "Books & Magazines" Category (LP: #903775)
  * add support for the scagent "Support Website" feature
  * lp:~mvo/software-center/performance-probes,
    lp:~mvo/software-center/profiling1:
    - improve accuracy of startup time measurement and add "probe"
      points to make profiling easier
  * lp:~mvo/software-center/purchaseviewspinner2:
    - add a spinner to the purchaseview both when new windows
      are opened and in the global toolbar
  * softwarecenter/ui/gtk3/dialogs/__init__.py:
    - trivial fix to increase the size of the expanded details
      in the message dialog

  [ Gabor Kelemen ]
  * lp:~kelemeng/software-center/bug880757:
    - Mark strings containing the “ character as Unicode, to fix their
      translations. LP: #880757
  * lp:~kelemeng/software-center/bug869935:
    - Update help translations from Launchpad. LP: #869935
  * lp:~kelemeng/software-center/bug868971:
    - Add a translator comment to the 'Top Rated %s' string, name the
     variable. LP: #868971

  [ Gary Lasker ]
  * lp:~gary-lasker/software-center/catalog-published-date-lp803028:
    - add date_published value from the software-center-agent server
      for use with cataloged time so that for-purchase items appear
      correctly and in the proper order in What's New; include unit
      tests for the new functionality (LP: #803028, LP: #886698)

  [ Robert Roth ]
  * lp:~evfool/software-center/lp905082:
    - fix typo LP: #905082

  [ Giovanni Campagna ]
  * lp:~gcampax/software-center/fedora:
    - add fedora distro backend and some cleanup in the PackageKit code
      and improvements to the AppStream xml parser
 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:52:32 +0100