Alt is a simpler and prettier interface to NewsBlur | Hacker News Reader

Alt is a simpler and prettier interface to NewsBlur

davidjohnstone.net

I like the look of this _much_ better than Newsblur, but I also want to be able to filter by feed. I didn't see that this is possible on Alt. Did I miss something?

edit: ah, i see what i missed.... Still, I'd like not to have to do that mouse-over to get to the list.

Yes. IMO that list is core and shouldn't be hidden away. Maybe a good compromise would be to allow it to be expanded, and not block the underlying text when expanded. i.e. an option to tuck it off to the side an leave it in place.

For my purposes, it works well with the list hidden, since I vary rarely use it. However, in developing this, I have found that having to open and close it as much as is currently required if you do use it (unless your monitor is very wide) is annoying, so I'll probably change it soon.

Cool! I've been thinking about doing a similar thing, since I think NewsBlur's main web UI is still way too noisy (although I'd keep much more of the actual functionality).

Was it easy to use the NewsBlur API? I'm assuming it isn't documented.

It is actually: http://www.newsblur.com/api

What exactly is being returned by the API calls isn't documented, like which field is the unread count, but I didn't have any issues with what I did. I have a feeling it might have timing issues when fetching items one page at a time. Each page contains 12 items (I think), and you request each page with a page=n query parameter, which probably means you'll see duplicated items if new items come in as you're reading.

I might put the code for this up on GitHub, although it's a bit messy (since most of it was written for a backend that I was making, which worked in a somewhat different way).

Does NewsBlur offer an authentication API? I'm leery of giving you the password to my NewsBlur account, since that's like handing you the keys to the castle.

Unfortunately not. I completely understand your reluctance at entering your password, although I can assure you that I'm neither looking at nor saving passwords (and the same goes for emails/usernames, for that matter).

Would be great if you offered an SSL version of the site. Then I wouldn't feel so bad having my password sent in plain text.

Are you considering open sourcing this? People could then run it locally without the fear of having their passwords exposed to 3rd parties

I wish Heroku didn't charge $20/month for SSL...

Yes, I'm planning on open sourcing it. I just have a couple of things to do, and a couple of comments to add.

No worries, it's a pity about the charges. I really love the what you've done and for me, my RSS readings are not that big a deal to secure. Thanks very much for putting in the effort and (when you do) open sourcing it!

Here's the source: https://github.com/davidjohnstone/alt

I like the way you preview the features with the mouse over and image highlights.

Thanks. I made it for another website last week, and decided to reuse here.

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