[Ext] Brief 1.1 - feed reading extension

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Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

[Ext] Brief 1.1 - feed reading extension

Post by Ancestor »

Brief is feed reading extension for Firefox.

Brief 1.1 has been released. See the http://brief.mozdev.org for details.

Homepage | Install Brief from addons.mozilla.org

Features:
  • Integration with Live Bookmarks.
  • Articles permanently stored in a database.
  • Easily mark articles as read, star the interesting ones.
  • Streamlined display of feed content.
  • Browse your feeds anyway you want - view unread or starred articles, display a single feed or a folder.
  • Full text search-as-you-type.
  • Statusbar display showing number of unread articles.
  • Feeds automatically updated in the background.
Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image Image

Localizations:
bg-BG, da-DK, de-DE, de-DE, el-GR, en-GB, fr-FR, hu-HU, it-IT, ja-JP, nb-NO, nl-NL, ru-RU, sk-SK, tr-TR, zh-CN, zh-TW.

Release notes:
  • Remember that for Brief to work you should bookmark your feeds as Live Bookmarks (not regular bookmarks).
  • NoScript users should add file:// to the list of trusted sites.

You can customize Brief's look using CSS stylesheets. Create your own style and share it!
Last edited by Ancestor on December 17th, 2007, 3:13 pm, edited 22 times in total.
doutor.zero
Posts: 59
Joined: August 9th, 2006, 3:47 pm

Post by doutor.zero »

Congratulations for the extension. I like the UI, very professional.

Can I suggest you some things?

1- First, a option to open the feeds in a new tab (like Habari Xenu). Something like this:

Image

2- Auto-detect feeds in a page.

3- A option to turn off the statusbar icon

Thanks.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

Thanks!
doutor.zero wrote:Congratulations for the extension. I like the UI, very professional.

Can I suggest you some things?

1- First, a option to open the feeds in a new tab (like Habari Xenu). Something like this:

I am not sure what you mean. Do you want to open the feed content view in a new tab? I don't think I'll ever implement it for both technical and interface design reasons. In future version perhaps you'll be able to achieve something similar by simply opening two instances of Brief and collapsing the left-hand feed list pane (I plan on adding a button to do it). I don't know yet, I'll wait to see if more people would find it useful.

2- Auto-detect feeds in a page.

Firefox already detects feeds, doesn't it? Brief integrates with Live Bookmarks, so it uses Firefox's subscription mechanism.

3- A option to turn off the statusbar icon

It's already there, take a closer look at the Main tab in the options window. :)
doutor.zero
Posts: 59
Joined: August 9th, 2006, 3:47 pm

Post by doutor.zero »

Thanks for your reply.

What I want in 1 is to open the news page in a new tab, when I click on the feed (see the screenshot). The behavior of your extension is similar to Sage, the "target" page is opened in the same tab and I want to have a option to make it open in a new tab, just clicking on it.

Ok for 2, you are right on that. And apologies for question 3, I simple don't look there.

Thanks again and sorry for my english.
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keithy397
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Joined: August 29th, 2004, 6:49 pm
Location: North Wales, UK.

Post by keithy397 »

doutor.zero wrote:Thanks for your reply.

What I want in 1 is to open the news page in a new tab, when I click on the feed (see the screenshot). The behavior of your extension is similar to Sage, the "target" page is opened in the same tab and I want to have a option to make it open in a new tab, just clicking on it.


Hi,

I'm trying this out too. I do like a nice easy to use feed reader.

I understand what doubter.zero means. Once you've selected the folder in the side bar that you would like to view, the 'list' page over-writes whatever tab you have selected. It would be nice (as he says) to have an option to open the 'list' in a new tab.
Cheers,
Keith
doutor.zero
Posts: 59
Joined: August 9th, 2006, 3:47 pm

Post by doutor.zero »

No, I don't want to open the list of the feeds in a new tab (but maybe a option to do that will be good). What I want is open the content of the items inside the feeds in a new tab.

This way:

1- click on the left bar to load the feed;

2- Several items (articles) are displayed on the right;

3- Click on one to read the news. Today, Sage like, the item in loaded in the same tab, wasting space because the sidebar is keep open.

4- Add a option, like the extension Habari Xenu, to open that item in a new tab. I can do that with middle click but will be nice to just click on it and have the site of the feed opened in a new tab.

Thanks.
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ZonkSJx
Posts: 433
Joined: February 7th, 2006, 1:51 pm
Location: USA

Post by ZonkSJx »

Can you make Brief compatible with SeaMonkey 1.1 ?
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

doutor.zero, such option is in fact on my todo list for the next version.

ZonkSJx wrote:Can you make Brief compatible with SeaMonkey 1.1 ?

I am afraid it is currently impossible as SeaMonkey doesn't provide the feed parsing interfaces Brief uses.
doutor.zero
Posts: 59
Joined: August 9th, 2006, 3:47 pm

Post by doutor.zero »

Ancestor wrote:doutor.zero, such option is in fact on my todo list for the next version.


Thanks a lot.

Just one more thing: when I click on the feed it's need to be updated, like the other extensions do. Because now I need to select the feed, click with the right mouse button and updated it manually.
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

doutor.zero wrote:Just one more thing: when I click on the feed it's need to be updated, like the other extensions do. Because now I need to select the feed, click with the right mouse button and updated it manually.

I don't think it would make much sense. Feeds are periodically updated in the background which should be enough for them to be up-to-date most of the time. If you need to force an update it's better to just hit Update Feeds button to update all of them.

If a feed was updated every time user selects it it would either mean that it wouldn't be displayed until the download is complete (terrible trade-off, as right now it shows immediately) or the display would be refreshed soon after the user started reading it, with stuff jumping around etc.

Long story short: I don't think it's a good idea. ;)
doutor.zero
Posts: 59
Joined: August 9th, 2006, 3:47 pm

Post by doutor.zero »

Ok, understood.

Thanks.
Coool
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Joined: March 24th, 2004, 1:51 pm
Location: Earth, Europe
Contact:

Post by Coool »

New Features:

* It be nice if you add sound notification when new feeds are like in FeedReader.
* And enclosure automatic download like in Democracy Player or FeedReader.
Yan_
Posts: 5
Joined: June 15th, 2006, 1:19 am

Post by Yan_ »

Thank you for extension, I like it very much.
But I have some suggestions.
1. It would be nice to have a possibility not only to star interesting articles, but also to set several keywords for it, e.g. "tags". And then it will be possible to browse old articles by tags. It is really very convenient.
2. When browsing several feeds in a folder, it would be nice to display the name of the feed for every article.
3. Sometimes articles are quite big, and it is not convenient to scroll long page. Can you make articles "cuttable", e.g. only the header is visible at first, and the full article is shown by clicking on a button. For example AIOS changelog is made so: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/changelog.php
4. It is not good that articles are marked "read/unread" by doubleclick, because doubleclick is often used to select a word or a whole sentence (triple-click).
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

coool wrote:New Features:

* It be nice if you add sound notification when new feeds are like in FeedReader.
* And enclosure automatic download like in Democracy Player or FeedReader.

The sound may be a nice idea, although I'd make it optional - defaulted to off. As for the second feature, don't expect anything like that soon. I want to keep Brief relatively light-weight and this kind of feature seems more suitable for separate, fully-fledged programs.

Yan_ wrote:Thank you for extension, I like it very much.
But I have some suggestions.
1. It would be nice to have a possibility not only to star interesting articles, but also to set several keywords for it, e.g. "tags". And then it will be possible to browse old articles by tags. It is really very convenient.
2. When browsing several feeds in a folder, it would be nice to display the name of the feed for every article.
3. Sometimes articles are quite big, and it is not convenient to scroll long page. Can you make articles "cuttable", e.g. only the header is visible at first, and the full article is shown by clicking on a button. For example AIOS changelog is made so: http://firefox.exxile.net/aios/changelog.php

Thank you! Coincidentally all these features are on my to-do list. :) Tagging is a tricky one, though. I'm not sure yet how the UI for browsing by tags would look like. All good ideas are welcome!
4. It is not good that articles are marked "read/unread" by doubleclick, because doubleclick is often used to select a word or a whole sentence (triple-click).

I will consider making it optional.
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Aus
Posts: 183
Joined: September 6th, 2004, 1:59 pm

Post by Aus »

Ancestor.

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. Also, when I pointed brief at my feeds, in bookmarks, it picked up the top level folders, but not the individual feeds, i.e. I have a folder called feeds in my bookmarks, below that are my categories, within each of those are my feeds.

Feeds:
|
|
News
|
|
Feed1
Feed2

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

I hope that makes sense.
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