Monday, August 07, 2006

Feed reader complaints and the new and improved Memphis OPML

So I've been fighting with Sage (my favorite feed reader) for the last half hour or so and I decided to compile a quick list of what I'd like to see in a feed reader. Since the chances are pretty slim that A) any other developer ever actually reading this and B) he or she caring, I suppose I'll just have to code it myself eventually.

Anyway, here's the list:

  • Fault Tollerant (can recover from a bad parse).

  • Gives the option to ignore markup inside the plain text elements of an RSS feed (title, description, comments).

  • Doesn't keep trying to sell me yet another web service.

  • Gives me the option to Read and Write my collection of feeds to a live OPML file on a webhost of my choosing.

  • Doesn't collapse the organizational structure whenever I import a new OPML file.

  • Allows a manual OMPL export of a selected subset of RSS feeds in my catalog.

  • Gives me the number of new posts beside each blog when I update.

  • Gives me a "new posts" view that is an aggregate of the content that is new since I last updated.

  • Integrates into my browsing environment (Firefox).
And in other news, my Memphis OPML list topped 100 feeds this afternoon (it's at 101 to be exact). It also got a slight reorganization. If you'd like to check it out, it's behind the little grapic over there on the right; the text link takes you to a web friendly version. You can read it using Sage, or you can easily add OPML support to Firefox or Safari.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great work. Now the Memphis OPML needs an icon.