[Ext] Brief 1.1 - feed reading extension

Announce and Discuss the Latest Theme and Extension Releases.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

Ngamer01 wrote:EDIT - Noticed you don't have any options to turn off Home view (Brief loads automatically at the Unread folder) anymore. This makes me sad. =<

Sorry, but each preference comes at a cost of code complexity and I haven't heard any compelling reason to keep this one.

And some feed items are still being improperly tagged as either New, Updated (Unread), or read when feed updates occur in 1.0b2. Mostly in news feeds like Yahoo! News.

I've been using that feed for some time now and everything appears to work as designed. Irregularities are probably caused by the fact that Yahoo includes dates in GUIDs, so if an item is updated the next day then it receives a different GUID and is therefore downloaded as new.

What about the other bugs you reported, are they all gone?
User avatar
Ngamer01
Posts: 1033
Joined: November 3rd, 2007, 8:37 am
Location: Louisiana

Post by Ngamer01 »

Yeah, all issues with feed page navigation and counting have been fixed.

It's just the tagging issue in feeds that are styled like Yahoo! News.

Maybe I should grab some other news feeds like Google News and Digg to test and see how they're tagged compared with Yahoo! News?

EDIT -

Things are definitely not being tagged correctly.

Google News (http://news.google.com/) constantly has the same feed items downloaded time and time again into Brief.
Digg (http://www.digg.com/) had some entries turn up that are new but were downloaded as read.
raindew-01
Posts: 2
Joined: November 4th, 2007, 10:37 am

the blogs in Brief suddenly disappear from the left side

Post by raindew-01 »

I love Brief. It's so easy to use.

And. I've suddenly started having an issue in Brief where all the blogs I have to read disappear out of the left hand column, as well as my "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" where I keep them in FireFox bookmarks. All except one new blog I added to read, which is in a duplicate Bookmarks Toolbar Folder (I have no idea how that happened). To fix this, I delete my bookmarks, then go to my bookmarks for the day before and replace them with the old ones, then move all my old blogs to be read to the duplicate folder, since it won't read the old folder.

It's fine for an hour or so and then they all disappear again. (Not sure if it's after a restart of FireFox or what.)

Could you please tell me how to fix this? Thank you very much!
User avatar
Ngamer01
Posts: 1033
Joined: November 3rd, 2007, 8:37 am
Location: Louisiana

Post by Ngamer01 »

raindew - That's a weakness of Firefox. Sometimes it's storing of preferences and bookmarks gets corrupted resulting in lost data and settings.

Whenever you experience corruption like this and have to reinstall all add-ons, re-add bookmarks and Live Bookmarks, and reset all settings, then you should periodically make backups of your profile folder while your profile is still good. This is for the event the original corrupts for some reason. When that happens then all you do is boot the bad profile and replace it with the good copy.

Look for the add-on "Open Profile Folder" on AMO and install it. It'll give you quick, one-click access to your profile folder so that you can back it up to another area of your computer.

If manually backing up things doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then try the add-ons FEBE and CLEO on AMO. They'll backup everything and let you reinstall everything quickly (provided if your add-ons don't get wiped in a storage preference corruption within Firefox).

EDIT - Also in Brief remember to go to Brief's options and set the folder that your Live Bookmarks are in. If you set the wrong folder, you will see nothing in Brief.
raindew-01
Posts: 2
Joined: November 4th, 2007, 10:37 am

Post by raindew-01 »

thank you for your help; I appreciate that. I just came back to post that I realized I was going about it in a round-about way and should re-set my folder in the Brief add on itself, and saw you'd set that. And now I'm gonig to go back up my profile. thanks!
User avatar
Ngamer01
Posts: 1033
Joined: November 3rd, 2007, 8:37 am
Location: Louisiana

Post by Ngamer01 »

I'm happy to have been of help.

Firefox is delicate, but if you remember to back up your good profiles frequently (I do mine once a day during evenings), you can react accordingly in the event Firefox acts weird or loses data/settings.

And if you lose sight of Live Bookmarks in Brief but still have them listed in your Bookmarks, then just use Brief's Options to set the folder with your Live Bookmarks.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

Download Brief 1.0 beta 3 (English only)

It's probably the last beta before the final version. Tell me what you think about the altered default style!

Changes:
  • Rearrange some of the buttons on the main toolbar.
  • Pretty big changes to the default feed content style, especially to the headlines view
  • "About" window was too tall, split it into two columns
  • Other bugfixes.
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

I've found a very small bug, one which can be reproduced:

1. First, one has to set the "KeepJohnHappy" secret option.

2. While using Brief, click on a feed which has multiple entries, at least some of which have a small scroll bar on the right side of individual entries. (I don't know where that scroll bar comes from.)

3. Click the mouse somewhere in the blank area of the feed, then try the space bar, which will not move the page down, it only moves the first entry with its little scroll bar.

4. To fix, go to another feed, bring it up, then return to the feed that won't work with the space bar; usually, a single click of the mouse in the blank area of that feed will then enable the space bar, allowing the space bar to move the entire page down.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

John, once you set KeepJohnHappy, handling of the space bar is entirely up to Firefox, so whatever you're seeing must be Firefox's standard behavior. However, I'd be very interested to know which feed has this redundant scrollbar appearing on its entries. Link, please?
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

The scroll bars appear from time to time in different feeds.

As it happens, I had some new feeds when I was looking at your reply, and found that http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot, with only two entries, had the scroll bar in both of them.

I've put a screen shot here, temporarily: http://internet.cybermesa.com/~jliebson ... l_bars.jpg . Please let me know when you've seen it, so that I can delete it.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

Oh, I didn't know that you're using a custom style. It's a bug in the style then, it works fine with the default one.
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

I wondered about the style, but forgot to check the problem without it.

Now I wonder why it just started recently; I suspect a change in Brief that called for a change in the style, a change that has not been made, and which I don't know how to make.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

Or maybe it was a change in content of the feed that caused it? Does it happen with more than one feed?

From the top of my head I can't think of a recent modification in Brief which could have affected this.
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

The only other feed that I found this morning with this odd behavior was http://feeds.feedburner.com/neowin-software . There are others, but not all of the feeds had anything in them this morning.

When/if I "catch" any more, I'll post the information for you.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

John, you could try adding some bottom padding to .article-container.
Post Reply