RSS Reader: Not just a one-feeder

Worth Continuing?

from WinCustomize Forums
Just curious to know if anyone thinks this would be worth continuing?



Beyond just being a feed for 1 site, my intention is to give the ability add/delete other feeds and keep them so they'll always be there. Obviously have a lot of work to do, but thought I'd get some feedback as I'm curious to know if anyone beyond me would think this'd be useful.
desktopx
3,841 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm not sure?.... are you talking as a widget or DX2 object or standalone? I'd like a DX version. Currently I use a standalone program that you can set up to monitor many different feeds at one time. You can find it at www.rssreader.com. Something that could be embedded as an object like that would be real nice.
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It could be either a widget or an object, if I can actually complete it I'd upload it as both. Not really sure this would be a dial-up type thing as it reads the feed when you click on an item in the listbox. I could always work around that by caching things somehow, but reading rss feeds if rather *non* resource intensive, so when you clicked an item, it would load the feed from the net.

Blah, I'm babbling ... I currently use RSSOwl for my rss feeds, but thought it might be cool to have a widget/dx object running all the time that I could store my more frequently read items ...
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It would be cool. If you make it as an object anyone who wants to can export it as widget. It might be that you could set it up to download a list of rss sites on some kind of timed interval that is user set. You could hit all the sites on the list when you start up the program and then most of the news sites probably would only need to updated every hour or two and some sites could only be updated once a day.
Good Luck.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Okay, here's some updated shots. The first is just the main display (I figured out how to resize the listbox control):



The 2nd one shows the "Add Feed" display ...



I'm working on the primary functionality, then I'll see about timers and such. If any *expert* dx scriptor (**cough** **cough**, Tiggz, _Martin_, **cough** **cough** ) has any advice/thoughts on how I might best accomplish this , or anyone else for that matter. I realize I could setup a general timer, but am not sure about customizing for each feed.

Or, am I just biting off more than I can, or should, chew with this?
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
brncofan7,
I've been playing around with your RSSReader object, loving it! But here are a few things I've had to change:

In the RSS_Listbox object I've had to add the following few lines:

storyUrl = Replace(storyUrl, "&_amp;", "&") 'to reformat XML feed [remove underscore]
storyDesc = xmlstripper("description", joedata)
storyDesc = RemoveXMLFormatting(storyDesc) 'see below for use
...
DesktopX.ScriptObject("RSSLinkTitle" & x).Object.ToolTipText = storyDesc
...
Function RemoveXMLFormatting(strInput)
strInput = Replace(strInput, "&_amp", "&") [remove underscore]
strInput = Replace(strInput, "'", "'")
strInput = Replace(strInput, """, """")

RemoveXMLFormatting = strInput
End Function

Note, this is due to recommendations I found at
Link while researching RSS.

Here's my question for you: do you know how to make it so that when you are entering a feed title you can press the "tab" key to move to the URL field? It would make it sooo much easier!

Yell back if you'd like a copy of the whole script I've modified or if you would like to collaborate further on this object?

Cheers and thanks for the great work!
Sincerely,
Random Precision
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
brncofan7, just drop me a main with what you are looking for and I'll see what I can do. Email in account details
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
BTW, you shouldn't need to user to enter the feed title, you should be able to extract this from the
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think this is there so you don't have to use the "default" title set by the feed? I could be wrong though!
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Perhaps the object should use the title set in the feed and also have the ability to have the user specify a title...