[Ext] Brief 1.1 - feed reading extension

doutor.zero · Post by **doutor.zero** » March 1st, 2007, 7:39 am

What do you think about feed grouping? Let me explain:

Every time I use Sage, or Brief, I read maybe 10 feeds. Four are from newspapers, another four open source pages, etc. So why not to have a feature that allow me to create something like a meta-feed or a group feed.

I can create one of this feed named Newspapers and, when I click on it, the four (or how many I want) feeds are loaded together in a single page, at same time, with a separator between them (------Newspaper Name 1------, ------Newspaper Name 2------, etc).

Sorry if I'm asking you (again) something out of scope of your extension...

Thanks.

Ancestor · Post by **Ancestor** » March 1st, 2007, 8:53 am

Aus wrote:Thanks for the extension, it looks promising. Just a couple of points if I may. I have been using sage for some time and as such, collected a number of feeds. When I un-installed sage and installed brief, I found no way to import my sage opml file.

I will consider adding OPML support, although it's not a high priority at the moment.

When I point brief at this location I only get Feeds and the categories, not the feeds.

I hope that makes sense.

I am not sure I understand you. Let's say you have:

Code: Select all

Folder1
  |--Feed1
  |--Feed2
Folder2
  |--Feed3
  |--Feed4
Feed5
Feed6

Do you mean that none of the feeds labeled Feed1 through Feed6 show up in the left pane?

doutor.zero wrote:What do you think about feed grouping? Let me explain:

Every time I use Sage, or Brief, I read maybe 10 feeds. Four are from newspapers, another four open source pages, etc. So why not to have a feature that allow me to create something like a meta-feed or a group feed.

I can create one of this feed named Newspapers and, when I click on it, the four (or how many I want) feeds are loaded together in a single page, at same time, with a separator between them (------Newspaper Name 1------, ------Newspaper Name 2------, etc).

Are you aware that you can click on a folder to display all the feeds in it? You can achieve something similar to what you are describing by putting those feeds in the same folder. Right now it can be annoying that there are no labels telling which feed the entry comes from but I'm going to fix it.

Sorry if I'm asking you (again) something out of scope of your extension...

No worries. I am defining the scope as I go, so all the ideas are valuable to me - keep them coming.

doutor.zero · Post by **doutor.zero** » March 1st, 2007, 9:03 am

Ancestor wrote:Are you aware that you can click on a folder to display all the feeds in it? You can achieve something similar to what you are describing by putting those feeds in the same folder. Right now it can be annoying that there are no labels telling which feed the entry comes from but I'm going to fix it.

It woks, thanks for the tip.

pirlouy · Post by **pirlouy** » March 1st, 2007, 9:46 am

Waouh ! this extension seems to be wonderful...
Like I don't need any feature, I just wanted to know things about performances.

- You said there's a database: does this database slow down firefox opening ?
- If we have more feeds, does this slow down firefox opening, or use more ressources during session ?
- Feeds history will become bigger with time: slow down at opening ?
- if I use update all 120 minutes, does this update 120 minutes after I open browser, or 120 minutes after last time (if "check at opening" is disable of course)

Thanks for the extension of course !
Edit: it seems middle click is buggy (I thought it opens brief in a new tab)...

Aus · Post by **Aus** » March 1st, 2007, 10:22 am

[quote]
I am not sure I understand you. Let's say you have:

Code: Select all

Folder1
  |--Feed1
  |--Feed2
Folder2
  |--Feed3
  |--Feed4
Feed5
Feed6

Do you mean that none of the feeds labeled Feed1 through Feed6 show up in the left pane?

Hello Ancestor, thanks for the reply.

I'm sorry I didn't explain myself very well in my first post, but you have caught the essence of it.

Under bookmarks I have a top level folder called 'Feeds'. It is within this folder that I gather my different categories. Within each of these I have the individual feeds.

Code: Select all

     
Bookmarks
     |
   Feeds
     |
     News      
       |--BBC News
       |--Guardian
     Tech
       |--Ars Technica
       |--Slashdot

When I point Brief at the top level folder (Feeds) all I can see when I open Brief are the categories, News, Tech etc. I cannot see the individual links.

Aus

Ancestor · Post by **Ancestor** » March 1st, 2007, 4:35 pm

pirlouy wrote:Waouh ! this extension seems to be wonderful...
Like I don't need any feature, I just wanted to know things about performances.

- You said there's a database: does this database slow down firefox opening ?

Thank you!

Brief uses SQLite database provided by Firefox. It's the same system which most of Firefox's storage (Bookmarks, History) is going to be based on. Yes, it may affect startup time but hopefully not noticeably.

- If we have more feeds, does this slow down firefox opening, or use more ressources during session ?
- Feeds history will become bigger with time: slow down at opening ?

No, it shouldn't and no, it shouldn't.

- if I use update all 120 minutes, does this update 120 minutes after I open browser, or 120 minutes after last time (if "check at opening" is disable of course)

Since you opened the browser.

Edit: it seems middle click is buggy (I thought it opens brief in a new tab)...

Doesn't it? Could you elaborate?

Aus wrote:
Code: Select all
     
Bookmarks
     |
   Feeds
     |
     News      
       |--BBC News
       |--Guardian
     Tech
       |--Ars Technica
       |--Slashdot
When I point Brief at the top level folder (Feeds) all I can see when I open Brief are the categories, News, Tech etc. I cannot see the individual links.

So basically it means that Brief is completely unusable for you?

Unfortunately I don't see this behavior myself nor did I have any other reports about it, so I can't fix it. A silly question perhaps but are you sure that those "feeds" are indeed Live Bookmarks, not just regular bookmarks?

pirlouy · Post by **pirlouy** » March 1st, 2007, 5:08 pm

Ancestor wrote:
- if I use update all 120 minutes, does this update 120 minutes after I open browser, or 120 minutes after last time (if "check at opening" is disable of course)

Since you opened the browser.

Any chance it is based on last time instead ?

Edit: it seems middle click is buggy (I thought it opens brief in a new tab)...

Doesn't it? Could you elaborate?

The last time I tried, middle click has "blocked" brief. But I'll do more tests now.

Edit: I have forgotten what I wanted to say... It seems brief has a bug with rdf feed (this one for example).
Edit2: nothing is blocked with middle click in fact. It's just brief which prevents to close window when there are no others tabs... But middle click behavior is strange. Difficult to explain. Finally I'd prefer if it allows to update feeds...

Ancestor · Post by **Ancestor** » March 1st, 2007, 5:38 pm

pirlouy wrote:Any chance it is based on last time instead ?

Some.

I will think about it.

Edit: I have forgotten what I wanted to say... It seems brief has a bug with rdf feed (this one for example).

This feed is malformed, it's not Brief's fault.

Edit2: nothing is blocked with middle click in fact. It's just brief which prevents to close window when there are no others tabs... But middle click behavior is strange. Difficult to explain.

What's strange about it? It opens Brief in a new tab, that's it.

Finally I'd prefer if it allows to update feeds...

Do you mean that middle-clicking a feed should update it?

Aus · Post by **Aus** » March 1st, 2007, 6:12 pm

A silly question perhaps but are you sure that those "feeds" are indeed Live Bookmarks, not just regular bookmarks?

All of the links were collected using Sage and when I reinstall sage or Wizz they are read correctly.

Aus

Ancestor · Post by **Ancestor** » March 1st, 2007, 6:21 pm

Aus wrote:
A silly question perhaps but are you sure that those "feeds" are indeed Live Bookmarks, not just regular bookmarks?

All of the links were collected using Sage and when I reinstall sage or Wizz they are read correctly.

Aus

If you are willing to help, I'd like to ask you something. I would like you to switch javascript.options.showInConsole to "true" in about:config. Then open Tools > Error Console, clear any previous errors, open Brief and see if there are any errors in the Console.

pirlouy · Post by **pirlouy** » March 2nd, 2007, 12:10 pm

Ancestor wrote:
Edit2: nothing is blocked with middle click in fact. It's just brief which prevents to close window when there are no others tabs... But middle click behavior is strange. Difficult to explain.

What's strange about it? It opens Brief in a new tab, that's it.

But if you middle click again, it does nothing. We need left click to close tab. It's what I found "strange". In fact, pressing middle click should not open brief. Middle click (button) should refresh all feeds.

Finally I'd prefer if it allows to update feeds...

Do you mean that middle-clicking a feed should update it?

I hadn't thought about this, but it's a good idea. ;-)

Yan_ · Post by **Yan_** » March 2nd, 2007, 1:27 pm

Ancestor

- If we have more feeds, does this slow down firefox opening, or use more ressources during session ?
- Feeds history will become bigger with time: slow down at opening ?

No, it shouldn't and no, it shouldn't.

Hmm. I have about 50-60 feeds, and it takes about 15 seconds to open Brief..
And about 8 seconds to open a folder which contains all feeds with more than 1000 articles in history.
Is it OK?

Aus · Post by **Aus** » March 2nd, 2007, 6:53 pm

Ancestor wrote:
Aus wrote:
A silly question perhaps but are you sure that those "feeds" are indeed Live Bookmarks, not just regular bookmarks?

All of the links were collected using Sage and when I reinstall sage or Wizz they are read correctly.

Aus

If you are willing to help, I'd like to ask you something. I would like you to switch javascript.options.showInConsole to "true" in about:config. Then open Tools > Error Console, clear any previous errors, open Brief and see if there are any errors in the Console.

Ancestor.

I created a fresh installation of FF with a new profile. I installed Brief and copied my bookmarks into the profile folder. I checked The error console before making the change you suggested and there were no messages of any description. I then made the change, opened brief and checked the error console, it had three info messages.

No chrome package registered for chrome://navigator/locale/navigator.properties

No chrome package registered for chrome://navigator-region/locale/region.properties

No chrome package registered for chrome://communicator-region/locale/region.properties

I'm not sure that's going to help much, but that's all there was.

sleepysafe · Post by **sleepysafe** » March 2nd, 2007, 8:24 pm

Thanks for the very nice extension!

Please add an option to sort feeds based on the folder tree's order instead of received time. It's very confusing reading feeds from different subject/channels mixed together.
(fld1-RSS1-item1 > fld1-RSS2-item1 > fld1-RSS1-item2 > ...)

Another problem is the "auto make item as read" function. Clicking on an unread item will make the page reload itself to reflect the change and reappear from the very first line, then I must scroll down several times to find out the position I was reading before.

ll4ever · Post by **ll4ever** » March 3rd, 2007, 4:17 am

Very nice extension. This is one of the betters ones I've tried.

Using noscript, I find if I don't allow scripts globally, it shows blank items in the list.

This one is weird. When I first installed this, I didn't get anything from the feeds, just blank boxes. Disabled Noscript and it worked.

Now I have some feeds that have been updated and it seems to work without allowing noscript globally.

Since installing this, a new version of noscript came out. So I don't really know about it now.

--
If clicking on unread and then using search, "mark currently viewed entries as read" marks everything read. Same thing happens when there are multiple pages.

If I restart FF, it updates the lists (which is what it's supposed to do). When clicking on the 'Update Feeds Now' status icon or right-clicking on a feed and choosing Update Feed, it doesn't update.

A feature I would like is to see which feed an entry is coming from when viewing the entire list (unread).