Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 6:33 PM Pacific

Fun with headlines

Over the past couple of years, I've been doing more and more of my surfing using RSS and newsreaders, but the biggest problem for me is that I absolutely hate all the newsreaders that I've used. Probably the one I like the most is the Sage add-on for Firefox, but even that one annoys me because it takes up part of the screen. I haven't been a big fan of the web-based services either -- all I really want is headlines, a blurb, and a link, all in a compact, unobtrusive package.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that I finally sat down and figured out how to use Google's AJAX to build my own personal newsreader, pretty much exactly how I want it. At the same time, I've recently learned how to use Javascript to control styles (basically allowing elements to appear and disappear). Merge those two things and you've got a collapsible newsreader -- and I just posted it a few minutes ago. It'll be accessible from the home page -- just click it, and then select from the list of feeds and happy surfing.

I've customized the list of feeds mostly because they are sites that I visit and read. If you have any special requests, I'd be happy to consider adding them, but I probably won't end up adding that many more (if any) because it just starts to get too unwieldy.

As always, you might need to hit control-F5 to clear your cache -- otherwise I hope you enjoy it, and let me know if you're having any problems making it work. (I've tested it on IE and Firefox.)

Fun with headlines

Over the past couple of years, I've been doing more and more of my surfing using RSS and newsreaders, but the biggest problem for me is that I absolutely hate all the newsreaders that I've used. Probably the one I like the most is the Sage add-on for Firefox, but even that one annoys me because it takes up part of the screen. I haven't been a big fan of the web-based services either -- all I really want is headlines, a blurb, and a link, all in a compact, unobtrusive package.

Anyway, this is all a long way of saying that I finally sat down and figured out how to use Google's AJAX to build my own personal newsreader, pretty much exactly how I want it. At the same time, I've recently learned how to use Javascript to control styles (basically allowing elements to appear and disappear). Merge those two things and you've got a collapsible newsreader -- and I just posted it a few minutes ago. It'll be accessible from the home page -- just click it, and then select from the list of feeds and happy surfing.

I've customized the list of feeds mostly because they are sites that I visit and read. If you have any special requests, I'd be happy to consider adding them, but I probably won't end up adding that many more (if any) because it just starts to get too unwieldy.

As always, you might need to hit control-F5 to clear your cache -- otherwise I hope you enjoy it, and let me know if you're having any problems making it work. (I've tested it on IE and Firefox.)

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