cogdogblog: Here It Is! A New Feed2JS (and source code) Comments and Trackbacks

CDB Entry: Here It Is! A New Feed2JS (and source code)

Sun, 23 May 2004 23:37:07 -0700

As hinted, I have just posted an updated version of the RSS to JavaScript service/code we created in April 2003. The new one is now called Feed2JS and features a number of enhancements- primarily an adoption of the open-source Magpie...

comment by: David Carter-Tod

Mon, 24 May 2004 10:00:32 -0700

Alan,

Line 154 in feed2js.php is missing the ; at the end

define('MAGPIE_DIR', './cached/')

Also, in build.php I had to add all the _GET stuff, because register_globals is off on my server and any new php installation.

David

comment by: David Carter-Tod

Mon, 24 May 2004 10:11:52 -0700

Alan,

This page doesn't appear to be quite working

http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=examples

David

comment by: joshua farber

Wed, 26 May 2004 11:55:21 -0700

A great service, Alan -- thanks. (Found via the folks at MVCC, an example I've been using to show our own library folks what blogging+RSS can do for us).

One tiny suggestion, though: a feed which doesn't insist on starting so far to the right in a given area, especially when list settings are essentially null, would be much more useful, design-wise. How's about a default setting which aligns the list at (or nearer to) the left margin, for those of us who don't want our feed to align so far over?

(for an example of this in action, see the "tinyblog" section on the right sidebar at http://mediakit.blogspot.com)

comment by: Alan Levine

Wed, 26 May 2004 12:12:31 -0700

Joshua,

There are not formatting specifications in our feeds that dictate the alignment or placement, it is all how you set up your own stylesheets- it can be left, right aligned, and fat or skinny, big font, little font, blue font, read font, bullets, no bullets...

See:
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/index.php?s=style

comment by: joshua farber

Wed, 26 May 2004 12:36:24 -0700

Figured it out with some off-blog help from Alan -- thanks Alan!

But for posterity's sake, did want to point out that what threw me was that this very nifty feed-producer automatically puts out its feed in list format (ul). Most of the previous tools I've used (like Feedroll, for example) don't...and in our case, at least, it's more work to integrate a list into one's design than a simple series of text lines.

comment by: Alan Levine

Wed, 26 May 2004 12:59:03 -0700

Glad you got it figured out.

However I still think a UL list is the best *structural* entity for a feed. You are thinking of lists as they are normalled formatted, but you easily achieve the design you want by using

.rss_items {
list-style:none;
}

which removes bullets, and setting margins and paddings correctly gets you the "look".

A series of text lines does not convey anything about the meaning of the information- to a screen reader or someother type of display device, it just becomes run on text.

comment by: Ken

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 09:22:30 -0700

define('MAGPIE_DIR', './cached/');
should be
define('MAGPIE_CACHE_DIR', './cached/');

comment by: Alan Levine

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 10:05:13 -0700

Yikes, Ken, you are right. Some of the first releases had that the variable mis-defined.

Trying to clean up these messes, thanks.

Trackback from "Feed2JS"

Tue, 25 May 2004 17:22:02 -0700

Excerpt: Alan has reworked rss2js into Feed2JS. Basically, it now uses Magpie instead of OnyxRSS as it's backend parsing tool. Extra feature is abaility to pasrse Atom feeds too. I'm downloading and will study and probably make the changeover on the variou...
��Weblog: Open Artifact
��Tracked: May 25, 2004 05:22 PM

Trackback from "RSS to Javascript"

Mon, 24 May 2004 21:31:46 -0700

Excerpt: Mmmmmm...
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Trackback from "A way to include feeds in a static web site"

Mon, 24 May 2004 12:59:41 -0700

Excerpt: A few days ago, I found a site offering some software and a free service to convert RSS feeds into JavaScript, so they can be included with a simple