Hmm… Programmers like to solve problems. I appear to have a problem with RSS readers. The title also gives a hint that I’m making plans for an RSS reader. Considering all that evidence, it is pretty likely that I’m going to make an RSS reader, right?
Yup. You guessed correctly. I’m going to build an RSS reader.
Because I want to access my RSS reader from anywhere, I will be creating a web RSS reader.
Below is the list of features that I have planned for the RSS reader.
The ability to experiment with possibly dozens of user interfaces.
Wait, “experiment with possibly dozens of user interfaces”? Now why would I want to do that? The main reason that I want to experiment with a large amount of user interfaces is because no user interface for an RSS reader (both desktop and web-based) have ever satisfied my need for large amounts of data to come down the pipeline and be displayed in a good looking manner.
I am also interested in getting feedback from users to see which user interface is the most easy to use.
Now all I have to decide is what language to write it in. I’m thinking of either writing it in PHP or Python. I’m leaning towards PHP, as I haven’t actually done any real web programming in Python. I might try Ruby on Rails, as I know a small amount of Ruby.
Because of my limited resources, my RSS reader would be restricted to private alpha, though making the RSS reader open source would allow other folks to try it out on their own servers.
Any comments and suggestions on my RSS reader? Comment below.
Recently I’ve been playing with Midori in the wake of being informed that it’s now an Xfce project. A nice enough browser, albeit quite solidly still in the development stage. However, on systems such as mine that lack GLib 2.16 (and therefore GIO), there is a compilation error. Specifically, there are two problematic zones. The first is a confusion in the macros that check for GLib 2.16 and GtkSourceView that result in a failed compile if you have an older version of GLib in combination with GtkSourceView. Secondly, Midori will attempt to use GLib 2.16 symbols without first checking if the user has GLib 2.16.
So I wrote a patch and submitted a bug report. The bugs are now fixed in git master, but for the existing stable release (0.19), you can find my patch at the relevant bug report. To apply it, move it into the Midori 0.19 directory and then run
In one of my periods of lunacy that I enter into from time to time, I decided to try out the ancient relic known only as “Phoenix”. Or, really-really-old-Firefox, if you prefer. Sampling both 0.1 and 0.3, I was impressed, actually; all of the sites I visited had more or less perfect rendering, with only a few trivial sizing glitches (Although more technologically advanced sites such as GMail and Google Pages either didn’t work or loaded a more basic view). However, I did make one interesting observation: Phoenix 0.3 had somewhat better Acid2 compliance than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. That’s right: a 2002 early development release of Firefox still had better standards support in some areas than the latest and greatest from our pals at Redmond.
Phoenix 0.3 Acid2 Compliance
Internet Explorer 7 Acid2 Compliance
Take a gander, and ponder this facinating tidbit. Its actual relevance is questionable as certainly more sites will work with IE7, and additionally Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is known to more or less pass Acid2, but it’s interesting to me nevertheless.
