[Ext] Brief 1.1 - feed reading extension

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

Post by Ancestor »

Yan_ wrote: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?

Note that the questions I was answering were about Firefox startup, not opening Brief itself.

The time it takes to open Brief is not so much related to the number of feeds as to the number of stored entries. The stats you're giving are pretty bad, I haven't seen it taking that long. For me Brief sometimes opens and displays feeds in a blink of an eye and sometimes takes a couple of seconds. This is probably caused by the fact that the database is partially cached in RAM. If the cache isn't filled at the moment, the performance is worse.

Aus wrote: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.

Thanks for the effort. Unfortunately, none of these errors is related. I am afraid I can do nothing to help, since I've got clues where to start.

sleepysafe wrote: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 > ...)

I will add labels telling which feed each entry belongs to. If it's not enough you'll be better off clicking individual feeds. I don't want to add options concerning the sort order, it would a step towards making Brief more heavy-weight than I intend it to be.

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.

I know it's a pain. I'll try to fix it, although it's non-trivial, so I can't promise anything.

ll4ever wrote: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.

See Developer Comments on AMO - you don't need to allow scripts globally, just add file:// to whitelist.

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.

The former is a bug, thanks for reporting. The latter is by design.
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.

At all, ever? Are there any errors in the Error Console?

Thanks to everyone for comments and praises!
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Aus
Posts: 183
Joined: September 6th, 2004, 1:59 pm

Post by Aus »

Aus wrote:
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.

Thanks for the effort. Unfortunately, none of these errors is related. I am afraid I can do nothing to help, since I've got clues where to start.


Thanks anyway. I'll keep playing around with it in my test copy of FF and see where it takes me.
iudexd
Posts: 2
Joined: March 3rd, 2007, 11:39 am

Post by iudexd »

Hi,

this addon is really great!
Thanks for that work!

I only miss 3 things:

1. an option to delete the content (=topics) of all feeds

2. an option to delete the content of a choosen feed

3. an option to delete older content of a feed, if an update of the feed is available.
(So the feeds only show up-to-date information)

That way the database also won't get too large.
I know that I can delete single topics of a feed.
But I would find it useful to delete several topics at once.

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

Post by Ancestor »

iudexd wrote:I only miss 3 things:

1. an option to delete the content (=topics) of all feeds

2. an option to delete the content of a choosen feed

3. an option to delete older content of a feed, if an update of the feed is available.
(So the feeds only show up-to-date information)

Numbers 2 and 3 are coming in the next version. :)
asinisa
Posts: 1
Joined: March 3rd, 2007, 6:32 pm

Post by asinisa »

Hi, thanks for the extension, looks promising. Switching over from Google reader.
I put "chrome://brief/content/brief.xul" as my homepage and it loads up an empty gray screen (brief default startup).
It'd be nice to have an overview of a couple of feeds automatically, or be able choose the number of site feeds that load automatically. Loading the "unread" folder on startup would be good too I guess.


Very minor:
As a graphic designer, I think the "Mark as read" and the button next to it would be prettier in plain text. Right now I'm using the default Windows theme and they're gray and square. :P But that's more of a CSS style issue I guess.
iudexd
Posts: 2
Joined: March 3rd, 2007, 11:39 am

Post by iudexd »

Ancestor wrote:Numbers 2 and 3 are coming in the next version. :)


Great!!!
And what about 1.?
It would be useful for an instant cleanup of the database.

Greetz,
IudexD
doeddeldom
Posts: 83
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 8:59 am

Post by doeddeldom »

Great extension. Exactly what I was looking for.

But .... :)

This feed uses HTML-code in its headlines : http://www.aintitcool.com/node/feed
Which shows up in Brief like this:

"INVINCIBLE IRON MAN <br>Was On Cartoon Network!!<br>"

Would it be possible to filter this HTML-Code out?
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

Somewhat the same problem as "aus". All of my live bookmarks are in one folder which has five subfolders. Whereas Sage sees and uses all the entries in the subfolders, Brief does not:

In sub 1, (B)rief sees three entries, (S)age four.

In sub 2 (B) one, (S) four.

In sub 3, (B) two, (S) two.

In sub 4, (B) three, (S) five.

In sub 5, (B) five, (S) nine.
sonicm
Posts: 3
Joined: October 8th, 2004, 8:15 am
Location: Dresden / Germany

Brief - middleclick

Post by sonicm »

Greetings,

I think Brief is getting a very good RSS-Reader.
But I've got a litte problem. I love to open my News with a middleclick, so that I'm able to read them in a new Tab. Also I'm able to retreave the URL from the news, so I can spread the News around my collegues. Is it possible to let the URLs open in a new Tab with middleclick?

Thx for this great extension.

Maik
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pirlouy
Posts: 232
Joined: February 11th, 2005, 6:29 am
Location: France

Post by pirlouy »

I have an error in my console² when I enable Brief 0.5.2:

Code: Select all

Erreur : 'Update service is already running.' when calling method: [nsIObserver::observe] = NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

asinisa wrote:Hi, thanks for the extension, looks promising. Switching over from Google reader.
I put "chrome://brief/content/brief.xul" as my homepage and it loads up an empty gray screen (brief default startup).
It'd be nice to have an overview of a couple of feeds automatically, or be able choose the number of site feeds that load automatically. Loading the "unread" folder on startup would be good too I guess.

Yeah, I guess. I haven't decided yet but I'll definitely make it show *something*.
Very minor:
As a graphic designer, I think the "Mark as read" and the button next to it would be prettier in plain text. Right now I'm using the default Windows theme and they're gray and square. :P But that's more of a CSS style issue I guess.

Sure, that's what customizable stylesheets are for. I decided on default buttons but you may change it easily if you want. You are more than welcome to make your own styles, by the way. I am not a graphic designer by any means, so I included only one style but I'm hoping people will create some more, so I can put together a gallery on the website.

iudexd wrote:
Ancestor wrote:Numbers 2 and 3 are coming in the next version. :)

Great!!!
And what about 1.?
It would be useful for an instant cleanup of the database.

The point is, I don't really see why one would need to do it. The ability to store entries was one of the main paradigms when creating Brief. Why do those older entries trouble you?

doeddeldom wrote:This feed uses HTML-code in its headlines : http://www.aintitcool.com/node/feed
Which shows up in Brief like this:

"INVINCIBLE IRON MAN <br>Was On Cartoon Network!!<br>"

Would it be possible to filter this HTML-Code out?

Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Although I don't know yet if I'm going to filter the tags out or allow them, they surely shouldn't be shown like that.

John Liebson wrote:Somewhat the same problem as "aus". All of my live bookmarks are in one folder which has five subfolders. Whereas Sage sees and uses all the entries in the subfolders, Brief does not:

In sub 1, (B)rief sees three entries, (S)age four.

In sub 2 (B) one, (S) four.

In sub 3, (B) two, (S) two.

In sub 4, (B) three, (S) five.

In sub 5, (B) five, (S) nine.

Would it be possible for you send me a reduced copy of your bookmarks.html file?

Should anybody experiencing the above issue be kind enough to do it, they'd have to create a new profile, copy their bookmarks.html to it, launch Firefox using the new profile, remove all the private stuff using Bookmarks Manager and after making sure the problem still occurs send me the reduced bookmarks.html to ancestor (at) o2 (dot) pl

It would be very much appreciated as I am simply unable to reproduce the problem myself.

sonicm wrote:But I've got a litte problem. I love to open my News with a middleclick, so that I'm able to read them in a new Tab. Also I'm able to retreave the URL from the news, so I can spread the News around my collegues. Is it possible to let the URLs open in a new Tab with middleclick?

This is how it should work right now. Are you saying that middle-clicking links in the feed content view does not open them in new tabs?

Thx for this great extension.

Maik

The pleasure is mine. ;)

pirlouy wrote:I have an error in my console² when I enable Brief 0.5.2:

Code: Select all

Erreur : 'Update service is already running.' when calling method: [nsIObserver::observe] = NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING

Thanks for reporting, although this particular exception should be harmless.
Last edited by Ancestor on August 21st, 2007, 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
alta88
Posts: 1029
Joined: January 28th, 2006, 3:08 pm

Post by alta88 »

Ancestor, this is looking very nice. But before any suggestions, did you notice a prior report that unless NoScript is Globally Allowed, no text is visible in the headline list? This will be rather troublesome.. I tried adding chrome://brief into NoScript but that wasn't possible. Any ideas?
Ancestor
Posts: 252
Joined: May 7th, 2005, 12:51 pm

Post by Ancestor »

alta88 wrote:Ancestor, this is looking very nice. But before any suggestions, did you notice a prior report that unless NoScript is Globally Allowed, no text is visible in the headline list? This will be rather troublesome.. I tried adding chrome://brief into NoScript but that wasn't possible. Any ideas?

Add file:// to the list of trusted sites.
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

Ancestor wrote:
John Liebson wrote:Somewhat the same problem as "aus". All of my live bookmarks are in one folder which has five subfolders. Whereas Sage sees and uses all the entries in the subfolders, Brief does not:

In sub 1, (B)rief sees three entries, (S)age four.

In sub 2 (B) one, (S) four.

In sub 3, (B) two, (S) two.

In sub 4, (B) three, (S) five.

In sub 5, (B) five, (S) nine.

Would it be possible for you send me a reduced copy of your bookmarks.html file?

Should anybody experiencing the above issue be kind enough to do it, they'd have to create a new profile, copy their bookmarks.html to it, launch Firefox using the new profile, remove all the private stuff using Bookmarks Manager and after making sure the problem still occurs send me the reduced bookmarks.html to ancestor (at) o2 (dot) pl

It would be very much appreciated as I am simply unable to reproduce the problem myself.

Okay, here's what Ancestor and I have found:

1. I submitted the requested edited bookmarks.html file to him. For reasons unknown (and likely unknowable), all the entries in that file worked for Ancestor, but not for me.

2. I then did some experimenting and discovered that, were I to remove and replace the bookmarks.html file entries that would not show in Brief for me, these feeds then worked correctly.

(Now to figure out how to make the newly-entered feeds appear in alphabetic order in Brief; they are correct in the .html file, but in Brief they appear in the order in which I entered them, below the previously-working/not-removed entries.)
John Liebson
Posts: 6920
Joined: July 29th, 2003, 1:09 pm

Post by John Liebson »

Now that I have Brief working (that is, showing all my news feeds,) I have found a problem:

I use TabMixPlus. When I middle-click on an entry in Brief, the article opens in a new tab, as I expect. What I don't expect nor like is that Brief resets itself to the top of its feed page. That means that I then have to scroll down through Brief again to find where I was when I middle-clicked to load an article in a new tab. Brief ought not do that; it should stay where it was when I middle-click to load an article.

Or, as we all say, on a daily basis in Latin, in medias res, which, mistranslated, reads, "Kindly stay where you were...".
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