Finally, a feed reader that suits me
It might surprise you to hear this from a very dedicated and wanna-be-pro blogger, but I have never really kept up with feeds. There are some blogs which I have followed semi-regularly, but I have never really used a feed reading application consistently. The most I ever tried was Google Reader, which was definitely elegant and convenient but just didn't fit what I wanted out of a feed reader. To be honest, the only feed reader that was ever useful to me was Gmail "web clips," those little links at the top of the Gmail view that can import updates from feeds.
The truth is, there are a number of things that I don't like about the majority of feed readers out there. They are:
- I don't want a feed reader that looks like an e-mail application. You know what I'm talking about: the kind where you have 3 views (feeds, items, and content) and clicking on an item displays the full content in the content pane. I never really liked that interface for e-mail and I like it less for feeds.
- I don't want a feed reader that runs outside of my browser. I consider my browser to be my access point to web content and I'm just not interested in connecting with blogs in other ways. Plus, whenever I see an item that I want to comment on, using an external app requires clicking a link to a window in my browser so that I can visit the site and make a comment. If I am going to require my browser to interact with the blogs I'm reading, I may as well be using my browser in the first place!
- I don't want a reader that helps me manage the task of reading all the feeds I subscribe to. Feed reading is sort of a lazy task for me; if I go on vacation for the week, I don't care to "catch up" with all my feeds when I get back. I don't like to feel as though I have to read through all the updates from my feeds like I have to do with e-mail. I just want my feed reader to tell me what's fresh and give me some updates before I go off to work on things… I waste less time that way.
- I don't want to have to log in to read my feeds, or have to use my own computer. I just want a webpage I can go to that always works, one that I can make a homepage in my browser.
These ideas of mine might sound unusual, but it all boils down to the fact that I am not a hardcore feed reader and I never will be. I like visiting blogs to read them and I like commenting. In the end, there's never really been a feed reader that suits me. So, the only logical choice for me was to sit down and build my own.
Now I could have been selfish and built a feed reader for my use only, but I decided that it would be fun to build one that anyone can use. The end result is right here: feedmeplz. I've been working on this site since last Thursday and I'm happy to announce that I finally have a complete, working app put together. It's still very young and only provides the bare minimum of what I want out of a feed reader, but I will definitely be working on it more to add features and improve it. In case you are wondering what this app does that makes it marginally unique, let me explain: feedmeplz takes whatever feeds I give it and puts them into my list of subscribed feeds. It then gives me a "view page" that does the following:
- Aggregates the latest 10 posts from each of the feeds in my list.
- Takes all the posts and drop them into an array (so, if I have 6 feeds I have 60 posts all together).
- Sorts all of these posts together in reverse chronological order.
- Shows me the latest 25 or so posts on a "view" page, regardless of where they are coming from, in a simple list.
Now, I have to say something about how I made this work. I would never have been able to get anything done without SimplePie, an excellent feed parsing library for PHP. More specifically, it was the Sorting multiple feeds by time and date tutorial from the SimplePie weblog that allowed me to finish this project so quickly (and made me rewrite my initial code to use SimplePie instead of Magpie.
There is a caveat to aggregating feeds in this way, however. If I try to include feeds that don't publish dates along with their updates, they just sit at the top and mess up the whole feed aggregation. This is an unfortunate downside, but I'm fine with saying that those feeds are just published incorrectly and ought to be changed. Works for me.
Anyway, if there is anyone else out there who might find this useful, I invite them to register for the site and give it a try. Even if you already have a feed reader of choice, I'd venture to say that feedmeplz makes a great homepage that helps you keep up with a handful of feeds. You can check out my new homepage on feedmeplz here.
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14 Comments
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"The requested URL /register/register.php was not found on this server." - quoth the server, 404…
Whoops, my mistake! That problem should be fixed now.
Thanks, works now.
Tried it, but didn't like it. What I miss the most is the read/unread post feature - the items which I have already read, should really be differently displayed from the items that are unread.
For me, the perfect feed reader still remains Sage.
zooey: That's definitely a good point. It would, however, require a lot of work to have the app "store" posts that have been read. For this reason I left that work up to the browser… links you haven't visited yet are bold, and when you visit them, they lose the bold weight. It's a cheap way of providing the feature, but assuming the links change often, it should be enough.
Your title, " Finally, a feed reader that suits me" leads one to believe you've tried a few here and there, but then you admit, "I have never really used a feed reading application consistently". That seems like link bait to me, but knowing the source, I bit.
I can't knock another's work when I haven't made an attempt in this area myself, so - good job. That being said, I was happy to see that it validated (yeah, I'm one of those), but it would've been better if the CSS was fluid IMO. (I would've left a suggestion but…)
Keep up the good work Christian.
BillyG, you totally misunderstood me. I have tried a bunch of feed readers, including Bloglines, Google Reader, Sage, Google Homepage, and Netvibes. None of them became part of my routine, which is why I said I haven't used any consistently. It's not link bait!
And the CSS is fluid… not really sure what you are talking about there.
Great job, Christian. Thank you : )
Hey Christian, looks like a great tool you've designed. For some reason though, when I click on blog, suggestions, and help, nothing happens. Also, I currently use Newshutch for the RSS feeds I subscribe to… is there a way to import my OPML file into feedmeplz?
Great job man!
Blog, suggestions, and help haven't been implemented yet. I'm going to get those things up tonight.
OPML is something I haven't looked into, so there's no way to do it right now, but I will definitely take a look and see if there is a way to import an OPML file. Thanks for bringing that up.
Fluid is when the page resizes with the browser window (especially noticeable when you drag the window edge to resize it yourself), I didn't notice this feature with your site. Cheers.
BillyG, again, I have no idea what you are talking about. Did you visit the right site? What browser are you using? A quick look at the CSS will reveal to you that the site is deifinitely set up to be fluid, so I have no idea why you are seeing it as fixed.
This is Ryan from the SimplePie project. I'm glad you found SimplePie so easy to use!
I think it would be important to let you know that we're very, very close to releasing version 1.0, and I would recommend that all new development happen with the very latest trunk builds until 1.0 comes out. I believe we're done breaking the API, and what goes live in 1.0 will not be broken through the entire 1.x series of releases.
Also (as you noted the multifeed sorting tutorial), we've integrated Multifeeds support directly into the core of SimplePie 1.0 so it's as easy to work with as parsing a single feed is. Here's the new tutorial (in our not-quite-launched wiki): http://simplepie.org/wiki/tutorial/sort_multiple_feeds_by_time_and_date
Please feel free to drop me an email, post in the forums, or hit us up via IRC in #simplepie on freenode.net if you have any questions or issues getting set up.
Ryan: Thanks so much for the update, the new multifeeds functionality looks great and I would love to rewrite the code for feedmeplz as soon as this weekend. I'll probably hit IRC soon with some questions. Thanks again.
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p>I guess I am too much of an info-junkie to deal with anything but the power and synchronization of FeedDemon! :4a7d3d609129a9296bf7ac0608c2097