Test Blog » MacOSX

Stop the presses

Sameer — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:05:34 +0000

A shell script I wrote earlier got mentioned in the December issue of Macworld. It is hard to find the mention, but it is there. I wrote the script to move my feeds from Safari RSS to Bloglines. Last month, I upgraded the shell script to an Automator action, so you do not need to open Terminal.app if you do not want to. The article is a bit incorrect about that point, but I guess it was written a while ago.

If you are looking to move to/from Bloglines and you want more freedom and would like complete control over your feed reader, I recommend the excellent, open source program : Gregarius. It is highly extensible and supports plugins and themes and has lots of Ajax goodness. If you spend a lot of time reading feeds it is important to have a feed reader that does everything just the way you want it to.

Export Safari RSS feeds via OPML

Sameer — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:24:13 +0000

I wrote a little shell script to export Safari‘s RSS feeds as an OPML file. This enabled me to import my list of feeds into other News Aggregators.

Update: I have also created an Automator Applicaton, so that the opml file can be created by just doubling clicking.

Usage

Click here to download the Automator Application – Just double click and a Safari.opml file will be created on the desktop containing all your feeds.

Click here to download the shell script – You might need to right click and then save it somwhere.
ExportRss2Opml.sh

To get the OPML bookmarks, go to the directory where you saved the script and run sh ExportRss2Opml.sh > safari.opml in the Terminal.

The file safari.opml will be an opml file containing your Safari feeds. I have tested the script by importing the resulting opml file into bloglines and Firefox’s Sage extension. Your mileage may vary. Let me know if you have any problems or comments.

Notes

Need to replace xmlUrl with htmlUrl to import into wordpress. http://wordpress.org/support/topic/2432

Versions

Automator Version 1.2
Shell Script Version 1.2 (Oct 19 2005)
- Created an automator version. Just double click and it will create a Safari.opml file for you on the Desktop.
- Released the code into the public domain
Version 1.1 (Jun 18 2005)
- Escaped more special characters in the title field
Version 1.0
- Hmm, maybe I would have saved more time if I had done it manually

RSS Readers

Sameer — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 17:13:34 +0000

RSS has changed my web surfing habits. However, now that I am trying to manage 30+ RSS feeds, I have been getting cranky with Safari‘s RSS reader. It frequently resets every few days and marks all the posts as unread. I guess this is to make up for the fact that there is no way to mark individual posts as unread. So I started looking for alternatives.
There are three main options. Desktop programs, online programs, and hybrids. Wikipedia has a list of them all. Among the desktop ones, Feedreader is light weight and open source, however it only works on Windows. I also tried Bloglines and found that I could easily get addicted to it. Web based RSS readers have the advantage of being able to read your news from anywhere with only a browser. However I decided to go with a hybrid open source reader on my own web server, so that I could fix with some “itch-ware” whatever features (or lack of them) annoy me. Ads in RSS feeds is already a minor irritant. If they start flashing and popping, I will want to filter them out pronto. Check out lilina with the head patch on my webserver.

Dashboard Widgets for Panther and Tiger

Sameer — Sun, 15 May 2005 05:35:53 +0000

Desktop Weather Widget 0.1 shows Apple’s Weather widget on the desktop instead of hiding it on the Dashboard Layer.

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2 – big

It uses an unsupported API to make a “transparent webview”. The cool thing is that it works on Panther (10.3.9) as well as in Tiger. An experienced developer might easily be able write Dashboard widgets for Panther. The ones that work in Safari should be a piece of cake. The others might be a little harder to emulate. Is this is why Apple has kept quiet about the transparent webview API? Spotlight alone is worth the upgrade however not everyone thinks that way.

This is not even alpha level software, so do not expect much from it. The source is available on request. The widget blends nicely into the background. Right now it responds to a few clicks in certain places. I can’t decide whether this would be a feature or a bug. Since the app is not visible in the Dock or in the App-Switcher, you have to shut it down by typing “killall DesktopWidget” in the Terminal. If you want your preferences to be permanent, then edit
DesktopWidget.app/Contents/Resources/Weather.wdgt/Weather.js.

Konfabulator-style Dashboard Widgets

Sameer — Fri, 13 May 2005 23:39:07 +0000

I have been dying to get my Dashboard widgets flush with with the desktop like I used to be able to do with Konfabulator. So I decided to write my first cocoa app. Thanks to this hint from Gus Meuller, the Objective C tutorial from Apple and help from Skiadas : This is the result. The weather widget is flush with the desktop and is appears under Terminal.app permanently.

The code uses an unsupported API to make webview transparent. Apple should make this API permanent. Since this will probably work on 10.3.9 it means that one might be able to make a program to implement Dashboard on Panther also. The “Amnesty Widget Browser” probably already supports it.

There are many things to do. The first is to make this WidgetApp more like Quicksilver in terms of its interaction with the rest of the desktop. Also a coreimage effect would be nice. It will be a fun project to work on. I don’t know if I will have the time. The thesis is in dire need of some TLC. But for now it looks beautiful.