Newsblur is my go-to place for news and there is one killer feature that
would make it my TOP source for info. Every now and then I stumble upon
other links that aren’t available via RSS or I don’t want to subscribe to the site . . .
It would be AWESOME if Newsblur had a “place” where I could save these other links to look at later without subscribing to RSS. I guess I’m asking for bookmarks instead of just saved RSS/XML links.
I’m a paid subscriber for years and think that newsblur is simply the best, I don’t have any criticism, only praise for this vital service. For me I think this feature would make it THAT much better.
I love this idea and I want to build it. I’m not sure when but it’s on the priority list. If people want this, keep this thread updated and eventually I’ll have the free day to commit to it.
There is, of course, the bookmarklet, but that only works for sharing stories publicly. What would be nice is saving a story directly, including saved story tags. Even better if saved stories had notes, which they do not yet have.
Me too, saving sites having found outside of NB in pocket, but constantly forgetting about that fact - which sheds light on the amount of time I spend on NB.
In the past I unwillingly saved all NB-stuff (to read it later) in pocket in order to have every read-later-item at one place, but could not hang on to that. So instead of saving a bunch of stuff from NB to pocket I would prefer to save some non-feed-sites coming from outside to NB every now and then.
So I know there are still people, like me, that want a bookmark manager feature in newsblur.
The question is then, what’s the best way of implementing this feature?
Do we add links in NewsBlur like we add RSS URL’s?
Should there be an extension to quickly add a bookmark to NewsBlur?
Should Newsblur mirror the browser’s bookmarks?
The most simple would of course be the first. But the easiest to use would probably be the extension.
I, and many other people, currently use a Chrome extension called “NewsBlur Notifier”, that shows me a numbered badge of unread stories. Clicking the extension icon opens up NewsBlur in a new tab. I have completely turned off the badge function, because it’s always at “999” and I exclusively use it to quickly open a NewsBlur instance. I don’t want to part with this feature, but I also don’t want two extensions for the same service.
If Samuel was to create an extension for quickly bookmarking pages to NewsBlur, it would be ideal to also add an unread counter (one that can be turned off) as well as a quick link to open NewsBlur.
Clicking the extension on a page you want bookmarked, should show a drop-down window containing:
The current URL
A suggested title for the webpage in an editable box
A folder scheme, so we can save it to a specific folder or create a new one
A button to “Save” the webpage
A button to just open a NewsBlur Instance.
When on a new tab page, clicking the extension should open NewsBlur directly, with nodrop-down window.
Browser extensions are quite a bit of work. I may get to this but it won’t be anytime soon. I would convert the bookmarklet into an extension, but it’s still a week or two of solid work.
I’m afraid I have to be the one to be against the idea. We already have powerful, reliable solutions like Pinboard that can be tied into a workflow with NewsBlur front and center. I’d rather NewsBlur continued to excel at RSS feeds and avoid too much complexity. It already is complex in the best sense possible, as it gets the very most out of RSS.
The whole point of this is not to have other services tied into a NewsBlur workflow. It’s to have everything needed for a good workflow, in one place.
And adding more features doesn’t have to mean more complex. It can actually make NewsBlur a better tool for managing websites you visit. It might even make more people subscribe for premium if it becomes a premium only feature.
@Sternstaub
Of course we don’t want samuel to “dissipate his energies”. But he already said it’s something he’s willing to work on. So that’s not a counter argument at all.
@etcn
If it’s something you want to see, just say so. If its something you don’t think you will use, then just say so. But being outright against adding it to NewsBlur is honestly quite a selfish statement to make.
Splike, I’m sorry you interpreted my post in such a strong way. While expressing my concerns (which is not the same as outright dismissal!), I elaborated on how it could hamper the experience on NewsBlur’s core features not just for me. Also, I provided alternatives that can be used quite seamlessly with NewsBlur. Therefore I don’t think it’s fair of you to say I’m selfish. I was trying to provide another perspective that might be valid not just to me.
I use Pocket for this purpose. In my experience services that are focussed on solving a specific problem are of higher quality than services that try to do everything.
I’m still onboard with this idea. I think for some people saving directly into NewsBlur is a great workflow. Personally I can think of a few sites that I’d like to save into NewsBlur. I use saved story tags for things other people would probably use Pinterest for. Camping, cooking, send-to-family stories, and research for multiple background ideas I’m always noodling.
I can just reuse the existing bookmarklet and allow you to either share a today or save it. Right now I’m shipping the Kickstarter so I don’t have any time, but in about a month I should find myself with lots of time to build new features again. although I’ll also be building Turn Touch features at that time, but it’s not as intensive as getting hardware built and into boxes and out the door.
Which reminds me, I should build a way to then somehow share your saved story tags in a similar way that shared stories have their own blurblog page. That saved story tag would be great for sharing publicly, since they already have an RSS feed.
Next stop: group boards that are half-way between shared stories and saved stories, but can have multiple sharers.
Hi,
as Xmarks are closing down I was looking for another way of having synchronized bookmarks between phone, home and work pc. I found bookmax.net is best for me.
It would be really nice if Newsblur have same/similar service and I really wouldn’t mind to pay extra for it.
I dont need something special, just to have bookmarks in folders which I can easily move, edit and I can manually sort (raindrop.io is also nice but I cant manually sort bookmarks there) like in Firefox bookmark manager.
Have there been any developments in this area? It’d still be great to be able to save individual links to stories or articles in newsblur without the site needing to support RSS…
Are you aware of the CSP issues with bookmarklets? It seems to make bookmarklets ineffective on a large number of sites. I tried on github and twitter and received this in the webdev console:
Refused to load the script '<redacted>/add_site_load_script/6317d7e7b1a2?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fhome' because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://*.twimg.com <rest of error message redacted
The answer is a browser extension, which I’ve been punting on for a long time just because I know it’s a bit of work to support, since it needs to go to four stores (safari, chrome, ff, edge).
One day I’ll build it. Might be something to hire for as well.
It’d be really nice to just be able to paste the URL of an article into the Newsblur UI somewhere and be able to share or save it. Personally I think I’d prefer that over having to install an extension/bookmarklet, anyway…
Also, for pages that don’t have the CSP issue, I’m seeing the following error when clicking the bookmarklet:
