looks good so far but as always there’s a few things that I’d like to have. some of them are already mentioned and planned and one I’ve not found mentioned so far.
first I’d like to add my +1 to some planned features:
ssl (for everything, premium is fine)
mark read/unread toggle button and two next buttons one “next with mark read” and one “next without status change” would be something I’d like
show oldest post first and have a toggle button to hide the ones that have been marked read (Brief extension for Firefox does it like that and I think it works well)
and then something that might be a new idea:
a text only view, like the ones that Instapaper and Read it Later have. parse the story page to extract the text and show only that with some settings for style (font size, color, background color…). maybe use an existing parser, don’t know if Instapaper or someone has their parsers open sourced.
I’d really love an uncluttered text view with only the essentials. most of the time I’m not interested in pictures, videos, advertising, links to whatever else there is on the page. I only want to read the news in a blink and flash and picture free manner, with the style settings I like and find easiest to read.
just my 2€cent
thanks for the program and service as is. it’s greatly appreciated.
Idefix
Oldest post first is part of my next big feature set – customizations.
Now, that text view is a great idea. I’m going to think about that one and see if it can come together easily. I’d love to do it, but it requires a lot more text processing work that seems like it would be better done when requested. But if it tastes 1-2 seconds per request, that kinda sucks. So it will have to be enabled on a per-feed basis, but how does that get setup? Hmm.
You can leverage the Instapaper text engine to do this right now using a bookmarklet. This is a feature used in other Readers such as Reeder.app (iPhone & iPad).
Here’s the bookmarklet (drag to your bookmarks bar): NB-IT
And in case the above link won’t work on this board, the Javascript source:
javascript:
(function(){
var iframe=document.getElementById(‘story_iframe’);
var url=iframe.src;
iframe.src='http://www.instapaper.com/text?u=’+en…;
}
)()
Of course, this should be easy to integrate into NewsBlur if desired.
I can actually build this directly into NewsBlur, since the original Readability source code is public. But when do you want to use this? What’s the flow?
It’s for re-writing the original article if it isn’t full in the Feed view. So it’s a sibling of the Story view. I’m trying to figure out how to make it a good experience, since I don’t want to add another toolbar button next to Original/Feed/Story, but I’m thinking about it. Just realize that it would take 2-5 seconds to load, since I have to proxy the original page. It would feel very similar to the Story view, if you’ve ever used it. Thoughts?
It’d be awesome if Readability was built right in.
Here’s my vote for the implementation: there’s an option (in Preferences) to always render Story view with Readability. At the top of the Readabilityied Story view, there’s a ‘View Original’ link. This keeps the buttons to a minimum and doesn’t affect users who prefer to see the actual page. It’s pretty much the same way that Reeder.app does it, except that in Reeder you tap/click the feed title to get the Readability version.
Would anyone prefer to selectively apply Readability, vs. having it on all the time?
I’d prefer a fourth button besides story view. It’s something that should be selectable on a per feed basis, since the readability parser doesn’t work on all pages. and some sites are readable the way they are and it does take time and energy to parse and proxy the page. so I think it should only be done where it really helps in making the page readable. it would be a blessing for some sites though.
thanks for thinking about including it into newsblur.
@lhagan
thanks for the bookmarklet. it works beautifully.
I’m leaning towards a fourth tab. I also am thinking about adding a preference to make either Text or Story the default when you double-click a story, so you can choose which you’d prefer (and this preference would also serve as a notice that you can double-click story titles).
But four tabs! Man, that’s starting to get up there.
Samuel - that sounds good to me too. But what if the Story view button was a toggle that does both Story and Readability? Not a totally baked idea, but I think this might be simpler than four buttons without making it harder to use.
Just emphatically +1ing the text view idea - I often want to basically load a partial feed’s full text but have no interest in the site’s layout/graphics/etc.
Honestly, I’d be fine with this replacing the “original” tab, since “story” view already loads the link in full HTML. I’m sure there’s a use case for the “original” view but I haven’t seen the need for it so far.
