I finally got around to integrating trackbacks into my comments feed. I initially followed Paul Freeman's suggestion of using Brad Choate's MTSQL plugin. This is an extremely powerful plugin, though it added a level of complexity to my template that I would rather avoid if possible.
Then Adam Kalsey posted a new version of SimpleComments that included everything I needed, so I edited the template again to a somewhat simpler version that works perfectly.
Looks like phil will soon be updating his comments feed as well.
Could you maybe drop the target="new" in the links for the title and blog_name? Or fix the SharpReader code that opens links in the default browser, because those target="new" links open in IE rather than my default browser, and then God kills a kitten every time, and we just don't want that, do we?
Posted by Phil Ringnalda at April 26, 2003 10:26 PMGod kills a kitten every time an IE window opens on your system? If IE turns you on that much, how come it's not your default? ;-)
Anywayz... This is indeed a bug in 0.9.0.1 and will be fixed in the next release - thanx!
Posted by Luke Hutteman at April 26, 2003 11:00 PMI'm glad that the new SimpleComments features were what you needed. If you have any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
Posted by Adam Kalsey at April 27, 2003 2:05 PM2 things:
1. You really need to post a way to contact you somewhere on this site. I cannot find your email address anywhere.
2. I would like to talk to you about the license you use for your RSS aggregation software. I am writing a book about open source software, and I might like to include your software. However, it appears that it is not yet open source. Please email me directly so that we may discuss your plans for your software.
Thanks.
Posted by Scott Granneman at April 27, 2003 7:17 PMI think maybe I'm spending too much time with RSS - I knew exactly where to look for an address: in admin:errorReportsTo in your feed. I trust that's not a valuable address (as hotmail addresses go, that is), since I'm getting a fair amount of spam at the one I use in my feeds anymore.
Posted by Phil Ringnalda at April 27, 2003 8:23 PMI added a contact email to the main page - I guess using Phil's technique of getting it from the rss-feed was not quite intuitive enough for the average visitor ;-) Also, any mail sent to that hotmail account may get lost in all the spam I receive there...
Posted by Luke Hutteman at April 28, 2003 12:02 AMNo back and forward buttons, please. I've got more than a dozen three pane RSS aggregators installed, and SharpReader is the only one I've ever used for more than a day, mostly because it isn't cluttered with a bunch of crap that makes it look like it's trying to be a browser.
Posted by Phil Ringnalda at April 28, 2003 2:43 AMPhil: I couldn't help but laugh after reading your comment of SharpReader not being "loaded with a bunch of crap that makes it look like it's trying to be a browser".
I think SharpReader tries harder to look like a browser than most other aggregators. After all, it's got an address-bar at the top just like a browser. Also Phil, you left this comment here a couple of weeks ago:
It's not a browser? It's an app that GETs a resource from a URL, and renders the HTML and some metadata from the the resource. Sounds a lot like a browser to me.
Did you change your mind since then?
I see your point about SharpReader not being "loaded with a bunch of crap" though - I have indeed purposely tried to keep the UI as simple as possible. That being said, I actually do have back and forward buttons on my TODO-list. But I don't want them to just go through the embedded browser history (which would be fairly easy to implement), but instead be integrated in the UI and jump back and forward over previously selected items and feeds. Don't you think that would be a useful feature?
Posted by Luke Hutteman at April 28, 2003 10:02 AMI prefer strong opinions to consistent opinions ;)
Is it a browser? Yes. Does every browser have to have the same toolbar as IE and Netscape 4.x, only with cheesier buttons? Please, no.
Since I don't actually use the embedded browser, for the kittens' sake, I should probably just shut up about what people who do need, other than to plead for an option to not display the button bar that will change it from an elegant reading app to an automatic bookmark menu wrapped around a cut-rate version of IE.
Though having said that, it might be an interesting alternative app for someone to write - can you embed the person's actual IE toolbars, so you have their entire browser inside your program? You could do your whole reader as a single menu plus a keyboard shortcut.
Posted by Phil Ringnalda at April 28, 2003 10:29 AMA little more consistency over where keystrokes go would be nice. I keep getting weird stuff where I'm reading a linked-to article, hit a key I think is going to move the page up or down, and instead SharpReader shifts focus to the previous or next item in the feed or previous or next feed and I lose the content of the article.
That's where a Back button would come in really handy -- at least that way, I could hit Back to get to the article I was reading, hit Back more times to retrace my steps to another I now want to re-examine, Forward to get back to the article... and all with hunting out the right selections in the other two panes.
For some reason, both of these are substantially less important to me than a Reply button which pops up your installed email application to send a message to an article's author.
Posted by Garth T Kidd at April 28, 2003 5:19 PM