FR and RSS (vanity)

10/30/04 | me

[Paul_B]

Just wondering - has FR considered implementing an RSS feed? One that would alert to pings and mail, and maybe threads deemed important, would, I think, facilitate discussion here, without having to constantly check back.

[Paul_B]

Tis a thought...

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

With newsisfree.com and some other sites you can generate rss feeds for free republic.

[xJones]

I hope you don't meet the fate of Arthur McGowen....

[Paul_B]

I'm not trying to copy all articles, just pings and mail. Or can that site do that?

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

No site I know of can do that, but you could easily do something in Perl to accomplish this.

[Paul_B]

Interesting, but beyond my abilities/willingness to apply myself at the moment. Thanks.

[gcruse]

Doesn't the pager do what you want? You don't have to be on FR for the pager to let you know you have pings or mail, I don't think. I haven't used it for a few years, tho.

[Paul_B]

I'm not even aware of a Pager, and don't see it anywhere.

pb

[gcruse]

It's the speaker symbol in the upper right corner on, for instance, the article listing for this forum.

[Paul_B]

I see. I had popups blocked, so I never saw it. Will experiment with it and see what it does. Thanks.

[gcruse]

:)

[Paul_B]

At first glance, it doesn't seem very amenable to Opera's MDI interface. You can't tuck it away in a screen corner as with an outside popup window. And I don't want to switch to IE to browse FR. Otherwise it would be ideal...

[gcruse]

I've used it successfully on Netscape, but haven't tried any others.

[Paul_B]

Right now I opened Pager via IE, then closed IE. It still seems to be sitting there functioning. So maybe I can incorporate it with my usage of Opera. If so, that's pretty good...

[yellowhammer]

This used to work:

http://www.dev1.eraserver.net/PACIFICA/FreeRSS/Index.xml

[Paul_B]

That got me a load of articles, to be sure, but they seem to be from April of 2003, so it seems to be defunct. Annd unless the subscription could be filtered the volume would be too much, if it were working.

The Pager seems to work great for pings and mail. A great addition would be alerts on important threads. But maybe there's a ping list for that sort of thing that I've been missing; that would bring it back to Pager.

[supercat]

The Pager seems to work great for pings and mail. A great addition would be alerts on important threads. But maybe there's a ping list for that sort of thing that I've been missing; that would bring it back to Pager.

I'd like a self-ping option which would not generate a visible posting to a thread, but which would add it to the "My Threads" page. Additionally, I'd like to see a means of sorting threads by the date of last post (not necessarily last post to/from me).

[Paul_B]

Your suggestion points to the need for a much better format for following threads - the newsreader protocol. Newsreaders can sort by thread, date, poster, etc. Threads can be Ignored or Watched. Filters can be set to watch or ignore posters or keywords in the Subject. The degree of user control far surpasses anything a web browser is capable of.

The only drawbacks might be that the wonderful graphics here demand a html-capable newsreader, one with a cache that would prevent repeatedly downloading images. And many people are unfamiliar with newsreaders and would have to be initiated.

[wolicy_ponk]

Try the latest version of Firefox (1.0) Download here
It auto detects the RSS feed and places it on the bottom right corner of the browser window.

If you press the button, it will allow you to bookmark the RSS feed as a dynamic folder
with 15 of the latest threads posted on FR.

I have my Free Republic RSS folder right on my toolbar,
I can open, view and read threads 15 at a time, instantly.
You can open just one, or all 15 threads at once by selecting 'open in tabs'.
You can also refresh the RSS folder as often as you like, it's total insanity.
I will not be held responsible for the results of sharing this freeping style,
as it could potentially create even more 'freeper widows' out there...
My wife declared herself one a few weeks ago. Soooooo, I am gonna be going now...

Enjoy!

[MeekOneGOP]

Firefox? Is that similar to NetCaptor ???

[Paul_B]

That's great. I'm an old Opera user, and the latest snapshot also auto detects RSS, to the extent that it places the RSS logo in the address field.

BUT, I don't see any RSS logo when I'm at FR, and I'm not sure if the logo in Opera is actionable at this point in time.

Beyond that, the problem with RSS at FR would be that I would need it to be filtered. Raw would simply be overwhelming - a fact to which it sounds your wife would attest... :)

Thanks much for your input.

Paul

[wolicy_ponk]

The RSS button shows up on this page for me...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse?ao=1

[Paul_B]

Nothing here. I'm wondering what's going on, because I'm unaware that FR has an RSS feed; I've certainly not seen it advertised anywhere. So I'm suspecting that FF uses a third party service?

[wolicy_ponk]

No meek, it is an alternative browser to MSIE.
It uses tabbed browsing, displays no pop-ups by default,uses no active x or VB scripting, making it less vulnerable to crapware,malware,spyware, etc.
It was made from the bones of the Netscape browser.
Tabbed browsing uses less resources, as well.

[MeekOneGOP]

Oh, I see. Thanks.

The reason I mentioned NetCaptor is I have been using that for
a few months now.

It works with Internet Explore, and uses the tabs as well and it
kills popups, too. And has some other good stuff with it as well.

I've been really happy with it, too.

[jgrimm73]

Hello all, just thought I'd throw my .02 in here. I was following the thread looking for an RSS feed for my new site - http://www.tdowc.com. At any rate, heard firefox mentioned and thought I'd clarify. There is an opensource browser called mozilla - the first 6 versions of netscape were built from the mozilla source code. Firefox is another browser written by mozilla which is much more feature rich than the base mozilla browser. You can get it here - http://www.mozilla.org/ I tried Firefox in the past when it was just in beta, but was unhappy with the bugs. Now that a stable version has been released I'll be going back to it because of all the good press and functionality. I'll repost if I successfully am able to pull FR headlines into my site and confirm whether or not Firefox is using a 3rd party for syndication.

Best Regards,

Jason

[jgrimm73]

Wanted to let everyone know that FR does have an RSS feed. I found it through firefox as recommended, and it is not using 3rd party syndication. Here is the link to the feed http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse.rss and you can see it working on my site here http://www.tdowc.com/modules/xoopsheadline/index.php?id=3

Best Regards,

Jason

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks, bump!