August 26, 2004 at 1:10PM Sage: I’m loving it!
A while back, I downloaded a copy of RSS Bandit as I need/wanted an RSS aggregator. I’d heard good things about it, so I thought it would be a good idea to give it a try.
However, I hit the same problems I have with every other aggregator I’ve tried in the last while: it just felt clunky, and the mailer-style interface just doesn’t sit right for me when I’m reading feeds.
A few years ago, just as the first aggregators were coming out (about three, I think: this would have been after AmphetaDesk came out anyway), I took a stab at writing my own one: Mocha. I lost interest in it, mainly because I’m no great fan of VB (which I was writing it in), and because part of me never really saw the point. It’s now sitting on a CD, half-finished, waiting for me to come back to it. I did get a good idea of how I’d like an RSS aggregator to be like though.
For a start, I wanted two panes: one a display pane, and the other a tree. The display pane is exactly how you’d expect it: a display of the currently selected feed/post. The tree pane had two tabs: new posts, and archived. Each listed all the feed categories, under which were the feeds, under which were a list of posts. Posts would only be archived if you marked them to be archived.
I heard about an aggregator for Firefox a while back called Sage. Now, while it’s not precisely what I wanted for Mocha, it’s close. I love sage. I’m almost inspired to go back and finish my own one now.
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