Ever since the first XPIs of forumzilla I've been convinced that a clean and simple Mozilla-based feed reader was just around the corner. I tried NewsMonster when it first went beta but it was just too heavyweight for me. rsszilla and satimoz never materialized. I was beginning to get discouraged.
Today, Andy Edmonds over at Surf*Mind*Musings points out a new Mozilla-based aggregator called aggreg8. There's actually code here! And it works. I grabbed the 0.1 XPI (which works in SeaMonkey and Firebird) and gave it a try. It's off to a nice start but only worked with one of the first three feeds I configured. It complains Aggreg8 did not recognise your feed as valid XML. Probable cause of this is incorrect content/mime type. The "Content-Type" of this feed is : text/plain when loading my feed. It attempts to download Hixie's and it displays Andrew's just fine. I suppose I should file a bug :-)
RSS plus Tabbed Browsing is *huge*.
I just wish that Philip had commenting set up on his site so we could have discussions with him.
text/plain is probably not the correct mime-type for RSS 1.0 (though I'm not sure what the correct mime-type is), so strictly speaking, this is the correct behavior. For all practical purposes, though, you are absolutely right and this should be treated as a bug, because it's much easier for the RSS client to bend the rules a little bit than for every guy with a blog to start tweaking their .htaccess files.
For a discussion along similar lines, refer to Mark Pilgrim:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/01/22/dive-into-xml.html
Asa's feed: text/plain - Not valid for RSS*
Hixie's feed: application/rss+xml - Valid for RSS*
Andrew's feed: text/xml - Valid for RSS (RSS is XML)*
Aggreg8 display's Andrew's feed; all good there. It doesn't display Asa's, which probably isn't strictly a bug as it's got the wrong MIME type. It doesn't display Hixie's though; this certainly seems like a bug as the application/rss+xml MIME type is the most appropriate for RSS (well, Hixie uses it and he's always right). Aggreg8 attempts to download the feed, as does Mozilla, which probably says something about how Aggreg8 relies on Mozilla.
* Or maybe I'm just wrong. Whatever.
Didn't you just break the Mozilla Branding Guide when you called Mozilla Firebird... well Firebird?
Picky me... thanks for pointing out aggreg8 i will have to give it a try :)
i believe the mozilla branding guide only needs to be followed by mozilla. individuals can call the app anything they want to.
If you want to complain about NewsMonster fine but at least use the latest code. Beta1 is way old... you should try Beta2. Beta3 is right around the corner and 1.0 should be out by the end of May.
I spent a lot of time working on Beta2 trying to reduce the fingerprint. I subscribe to the theory that premature optimization is the root of all evil. Beta2 solves a lot of the speed problems present in Beta1.
Kevin
Kevin, I'll certainly try the latest beta when it comes out and I din't mean to suggest that it was anything but cool. I think I'm looking for something with less features though. It felt a little heavy.
--Asa
I feel dirty for this, but Phil's Aggreg8 comes just in time to fix my bug http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203742 for an offline RSS reader :) I hope he'll implement the offline browsing capability.
please don't start complaining about Mozilla not loading xml which hasn't been sent as xml.
Note that application/rss+xml is just a draft (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nottingham-rss-media-type-00.txt), I recall hixie being the one to argument against implementing drafts.
Other than that, if data is not sent with an XML mimetype, it's not treated as XML. Yes, this bothers people used to other clients at every second place, but that's how Mozilla used to handle this issue for years.
Axel
Christopher,
NewsMonster can already implement your offline browsing functionality. Just enable offline caching, run the aggregator, and then you can browse articles while disconnected from the Internet.
You can even go beyond this and sync to a PDA (I use my Zaurus SL-5500) so that you don't have to carry around a Laptop running Mozilla.
Maybe someone will port Mozilla to the Zaurus. Right now I run NewsMonster under Konqueror on the Zaurus and it works great.
Hey all, Phil here Aggreg8 creator.
I realise that the problem with the mime types is a pain in the ass and it really does my head in but I was in a real hurry to get Aggreg8 released before the Dealine (it was a university project). I did try and fix this by trying to create an in-memory XML document object with the text of the rebel feed inserted but I didn't manage it in time. If anybody has any tips on this please mail me. Regarding the Offline browsing, An archive feature has been proposed but as of yet not implemented. I am looking for help on this is anybody is willing. Then there was the comments section on Aggrge8 . After my Finals I will set this up. I have in the mean time set up a forum on my Chat board to discuss Aggreg8 (http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/PHP/PHPBB/index.php/viewforum.php?f=4).