I'm at it again: Last night, I got an initial stab at a plugin API for FeedSpool working.

The first thing I built was an auto-adjusting feed poll schedule plugin which varies the time between feed polls based on whether there were new entries found in the latest poll. It's kind of like an AIMD algorithm used in networking—I thank Gnomon for the idea a few years back.

The next thing I built was a quick plugin bundle I call miniagg. If you'd like a preview, I've posted an HTML snapshot of what miniagg produces. It's a refinement and reworking of various aggregator UI pieces I've had floating around since AmphetaOutlines, only I think this is the simplest and cleanest I've gotten it yet. (CSS and unobtrusive JavaScript, hooray!)

This only seems to work on Firefox and Safari—it's currently broken for MSIE, and I don't care enough to fix it yet. (Something to do with multiple CSS classes, I believe.) But, if you're unfortunate enough to be using that browser, here's a screen capture:

Miniagg-1

Archived Comments

  • Julian Krause

    I've been using a program called Rawdog for a while as my feed reader. Miniagg looks very similar to it. I've been looking for a replacement as he is not planning to support Atom 1.0 since feedparser has gone unmaintained. The HTML preview looks really good, I'm importing my subscriptions right now ;)

  • l.m.orchard

    Alas, this miniagg uses feedparser also. However, I was thinking of patching / finding someone who'd patched feedparser for Atom 1.0—or replacing it with a new, maybe less liberal parser of my own, since FeedSpool is actually not all that liberal (in that it requires valid XML, anyway).

  • Aristotle Pagaltzis

    FeedParser Atom 1.0 support patch.

  • Dan V.

    The feedparser page says that a prerelease v4.0 can be downloaded that includes support for Atom 1.0 feeds. Beats writing your own :)