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 koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | RSS feed improvements neededRecently the RSS feed layout on the home page was "revamped". See the screenshot, then read on...
The RSS feed link itself is being printed at the bottom of the individual RSS feed section, which makes no sense. (I think this is a mistake someone made when revamping the RSS feed stuff. :-) )
The current HTML looks like this (I've cleaned it up because there are missing newlines and so on here so it's hard to follow/very ugly -- might want to clean that up as well):
<div class="wiki">
<h3>Your RSS feeds</h3>
</div>
<br>
Slashdot <small>(updated Today 28 minutes ago)</small>
<ul class='niceList'>
<li><A HREF="http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/J8rhAiPKo3s/story01.htm">Genetic Convergent Evolution: Stunning Gene Similarities Among Diverse Animals</A>
<li><A HREF="http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/maxkoUtA8m8/story01.htm">Nuclear Trashmen Profit From Unprecedented US Reactor Shutdowns</A>
{...}
<li><A HREF="http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vYe9FkWl-hE/story01.htm">Sizing Up the Viral Threat</A>
http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot</ul><br>FreeBSD News Flash <small>
{...}
Other comments:
1. The RSS URL itself (currently being printed after the last RSS feed entry) should instead be used in the actual RSS feed title, and maybe a 14x14 RSS icon to the left of it (your call, I don't care either way), i.e.:
<div class="wiki">
<h3>Your RSS feeds</h3>
</div>
<br>
<a href="http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot">Slashdot</a> <small>(updated Today 28 minutes ago)</small>
{...}
2. Tags should be in lowercase, i.e. <a href ...> not <A HREF ...>; same goes for the closing anchor tag. I'm nitpicking about this due to future DOCTYPE compliance (keep reading),
3. While it's true that for some revisions of HTML the end tag for <li> (i.e. </li>) is optional, and despite the fact that the DOCTYPE for the site is "HTML 4.01 Transitional", you should close tags of this sort to be compliant with newer specifications (XHTML, etc.). In short: adding </li> tags won't hurt,
4. Be consistent with your quote usage; either use apostrophes or use double-quotes, but don't use both. I strongly recommend using double-quotes. If this causes problems/annoyances in the code ("argh, I have to \" all the time now!"), and the code is perl, then this is easily solved by using the perl qq quote-like operator e.g. print qq{<ul class="niceList">\n}.
If you want a mock-up screenshot of my proposed changes, I can provide one (really easy to do with Firebug and Firefox's built-in developer tools). Let me know.
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. | |
 justin..needs sleepAustralian
join:1999-05-28
New York, NY
kudos:15 | I fixed it up. What you didn't mention or probably notice was in the last visit to that section I changed the RSS checker to use async IO, it now checks a few thousand feeds in about 30 seconds, and does that every 5 minutes. Before, feeds would be checked on average every hour. So any new entry in an RSS feed appears much more quickly now.
I wonder if the RSS feed section should support adding twitter streams as well. | |
koitsuPremium,MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
kudos:20 | Thank you!
Re: async I/O: didn't notice it, actually. Wise design choice!
Re: Twitter streams: I have no real preference either way, but if it's not hard to add and you're itchin' to do some coding, sure I don't see why not. I'll leave that one to you or others to hash out... or maybe I should say hashtag out... 
--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. | |
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