May 25, 2009
@ 06:15 AM
Comments [6]
Preview of Facebook Comments in RSS Bandit and the Ribbon

I’ve made some more progress in integrating the Facebook news feed into the next version of RSS Bandit currently codenamed Colossus. This weekend I completed the addition of support for viewing and replying to comments in the news feed. So here are some screenshots of current comment workflow for interacting with Facebook comments

Fig 1: Viewing the comments in response to a funny status update from Anil Dash 

Fig 2: Responding to the comment by pressing "Ctrl + R" or right-clicking and selecting Post Reply.

Fig 3: The news feed on Facebook with the comment posted from RSS Bandit

The second major change coming in the Colossus release is the adoption of the design elements from the Microsoft Office fluent user interface such as the ribbon, contextual tabs, galleries and live preview. To prepare for this change, we’re first building a prototype of the redesigned user interface and once we’re happy with it we will start refactoring the RSS Bandit application to enable swapping out our existing menus and taskbars with the new interface.

Here’s where we are in the design prototype for next release. Let me know what you think in the comments.

 


 

Categories: RSS Bandit

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Monday, 25 May 2009 21:31:06 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Not enough room left to re...

If anything, I think RssBandit should free up some vertical real estate, not steal yet another 100px. (The current navigation tree could give up some horizontal pixels as well by ditching the +/- in front of the sub blocks (My Feeds, Search Folders, ...)

Or maybe I should just give in and buy myself that 1600x1200 screen. :-)
Ruben
Tuesday, 26 May 2009 18:24:30 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Heh, I think that's the first time I've ever become part of a screenshot gallery. I shoulda written something a little more eloquent. :)

Just curious -- what's your experience been of working with the Facebook API vs. something like Twitter's API? How do their docs map to real-world usage, etc?

Also, while I'm obviously a big fan of the ribbon/fluent UI, I wonder if it's really the ideal experience for a reading app; I am a little concerned about its introduction into Outlook and am curious to see how that plays out.
Anil
Tuesday, 26 May 2009 19:08:20 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
The relative button sizes on your fluent interface are backward - surely traversing content and marking all read will be much more common operations than adding and modifying subscriptions?
Bruce Williams
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 02:48:36 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Anil,
Sorry for using your status update as the showcase for my screenshot without asking if it was OK. Given that you're such a public individual I assumed it was OK. I wrote up my impressions of using the Facebook API at http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2009/05/11/SomeThoughtsOnUsingTheFacebookOpenStreamAPI.aspx - in general Twitter's APIs are a lot more straightforward to deal with due to the lightweight/non-existent authentication and authorization model.

Bruce,
We are still iterating on the interface but I do agree with you that our relative sizes of the various buttons isn't quite right. We're first working on getting the groupings right. In addition, I assume we'll get a bunch of good feedback on this design in the beta.
Dare Obasanjo
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 07:24:38 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Oh, no worries! It's fine to use my status update; I just forget that people actually *read* that stuff sometimes. :)
Anil
Thursday, 28 May 2009 11:59:32 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Please ensure the Ribbon control you use supports collapsing. As the poster above notes I can't afford to lose this real estate on my Tablet PC.

I've probably only used the buttons in that toolbar area in RSS Bandit less than 10 times in over two years of use.
Chris Auld
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