May 20, 2007
@ 08:58 PM
Comments [3]
RSS Bandit (Jubilee Edition) Update: New Features

I believe we're on track to release a new version of RSS Bandit by the end of the month. Besides the bug fixes there are two minor features we are adding. The screenshot below showss the options dialog that controls them.

The first new feature, is a fix that should fix a number of the performance problems people have when they read feeds with lots of unread items. Currently we display all the unread items in the reading pane when you click on a feed. Although this makes it convenient to read the unread items in the feed, it can take a while to render in the embedded Web browser if there are a lots of posts. To remedy this, we've introduced pagination to the reading pane. By default, we'll now show only 10 unread items per page and users can configure this to what best suits their needs.

The second feature, is actually the ability to turn off an existing feature. In the current release, the default stylesheet mimics Google Reader in that items are automatically marked as read as you scroll through the reading pane. Although a lot of our users liked the feature, a number of our users asked for a way to disable this feature. You asked, so we've delivered.

Our main problem now is how to change the CSS/HTML for the reading pane to introduce [previous page] and [next page] navigation links without making it look ugly. My CSS design skills are pretty lame.


 

Categories: RSS Bandit

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Monday, 21 May 2007 13:11:36 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
http://banibaraje.blogspot.com/2007/05/dare-obasanjo-and-his-breed-of.html
Stumbled on this:
You might want to it.
anonymous
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 08:45:57 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
It is always great to hear that a new version of RSS Bandit is coming out.

The 1st new feature actually tackles a very common problem slowing down the user experience in RSS Bandit. Your solution should make the experience better. However, instead of limiting the number of items, can’t you limit the time until the newspaper view is displayed?
Speficiy “Limit the newspaper view to 2 seconds” rather than “Show max 10 feed items”.

Which means that RSSBandit will try to display as many items as possible under 2 seconds. I guess that the time to build the newspaper view depends not only on the number of items, but also on whether they have pictures embedded or not. So it would be better to specify in terms of time instead of number of items.

Another way would be to load items asynchronously. Like AJAX fetches information in the background while the user is reading a web page, could you not build the rest of the newspaper view as the user is viewing the first bit of the newspaper view?

Could you consider this?

ppit
Wednesday, 23 May 2007 10:15:44 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
More tangents on the "10 items or less" option...

Off the top of my head, I would think a custom virtual listview would be appropriate for something like this. You only need render items as they come into view. Combined with a background worker rendering a few items in advance, I would think this would provide a great reading experience for the majority case.
Brent Rockwood
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