Earlier this month I posted a new version of FeedDemon's "Expando" newspaper style to the FeedDemon Tips blog, and I've further refined this style to the point that it's ready to share here. My plan is to replace the existing Expando style with this one in version 1.5.1, which is slated for the end of May.
Here's a cropped screenshot of the new Expando style in action:
If you'd like to try it out, download the ZIP file below then extract it into the \Styles
subfolder of your FeedDemon cache. This ZIP contains the new Expando style and its images, along with a copy of the old Expando style named "ExpandoClassic" just in case you want to revert back to the old version. If you're not sure where FeedDemon's cache is, you can locate it in FeedDemon by selecting File > Manage Cache > Explore Cache Folder.
http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/getstyles/1.0/Expando.zip
Important: Make sure your unzip tool uses folder names when unzipping or else the images used by this style won't be extracted to the correct location. If you see broken links rather than images when viewing this style, navigate to the \Styles
folder again, then select any GIFs you find in that folder and move them to the \Styles\Images
folder.
I'm curious to hear what other FeedDemon users think about the new Expando. I use it as my primary style, and being a tabbed-browser fan, I especially like the icon which opens links in a new tab within FeedDemon. Let me know what you think!
I have been using Feeddemon since pretty early on, but I never really got into the using the newspapers. I have my groups and then I just switch through the channels and view them one by one. I think the main reason the newspaper never worked for me before was that there was just to much information on it, the expanding one seems to fix that issue. I can scan the titles and pick what I like.
I am going to give newspapers another shot, seeing everything in one spot is definitly nice... what would really be killer would be to mark it as read when you expand it on the newspaper. :)
-James
Posted by: James Avery | Monday, April 25, 2005 at 03:55 PM
Whoa.... very nice! I had the same issue as James with the newspapers... so I'll see if this new style is the ticket!
Posted by: Matt Zur | Monday, April 25, 2005 at 05:10 PM
Hey Nick,
Really enjoy the new expando style. It is much much cleaner and has actually got Feed Demon to do what I want it do! Is there a way to set this as the default newspaper style for each channel?
Thanks,
Ken
Posted by: Ken Meyers | Monday, April 25, 2005 at 09:11 PM
Glad you guys like the new style! I'm actually thinking of using something like this in v2.0, but also enable you to do things like mark items as read/flagged/etc. from the newspaper itself.
Ken, if you select this as the newspaper style using the "Style" dropdown, it will be used as the default style for any channel that doesn't already have a custom style defined (on the Advanced tab in the channel's properties).
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Monday, April 25, 2005 at 09:20 PM
Hi Nick,
I love the style, it's neat and very usable. I'd like to make 2 suggestions:
1. I think you need a flagged icon too (even though you change the color - would look nice I think) and can you use the color that was selected for flagging in options (not sure if you have access to it from XSLT)
2. I've been changing all my styles that I used to display a link to the actual blog (with the blog name) next to the author name. This sometimes helps to see which blog an item is from when you're reading a compiled syndication like from weblogs.asp.net main page.
Posted by: Mladen Mihajlović | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 01:30 AM
Nick
Love the new style. I've been using Expando Snipey for a while and it really makes Feed Demon work for me.
One thing missing that is in Expando Snipey is an Expand All button at the top of the page.
Any chance for the future?
Steve
Posted by: Steve Lenehan | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 05:13 AM
Wow love this newer version, I think I'm going to play around a bit with it to add a bit of colour, too much whitespace hurts my eyes!
Posted by: Arvind | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 07:15 AM
Excellent, really clean and definately improves FeedDemon's overall feel. Top stuff Nick!
Posted by: Will | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 07:27 AM
Make it the default style :)
Posted by: Morgan Pugh | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 01:53 PM
Really nice. I thought the original expando was pretty cool for summarizing news, but this is even better. The button for loading into a tab is great.
Posted by: Bill Nalen | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 01:59 PM
Very nice style. One change I made was to use the Expando Classic background color (#F2F9FB). Other than the suggestion in the forums to expand all, it's looking good. :)
Posted by: OSUKid7 | Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 11:00 PM
Very nice, but my favorite remains Refined, and I hope there are future versions of it.
Posted by: Aaron | Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 08:26 AM
Nick, this is very nice. I would suggest that the wizard that runs after installation give the user a choice -- either the three-pane view or this newspaper.
Posted by: Paul Schaeflein | Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 09:16 AM
Paul, I like the idea of giving a choice of layout during the welcome wizard. Thanks!
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 10:25 AM
I like the style but... (and I'm being really picky here) my few small issues are:
1. The topic font seems a bit big and bold and in your face.
2. Topic font also seems a bit garish on the light blue background, like those two colors don't exactly match up on a color wheel. They are close but just subtly off.
3. There are three kinds of blue going on between the channel, topic and topic background. Seems a little... off.
4. The right/down arrow to indicate toggle is a little clunky. I actually liked the modern minimal look of the window pane icon you had going in Classic. Maybe something sexier/cleaner? All the other icons you have going in FeedDemon are great looking, if Expando is your style love-child I'd expect to see the same polish in the open/close icons.
Other than those very minor issues it's really great. Of course it's all opinion when it comes to colors so perhaps I'll hack around and try a color combo and share it.
Posted by: Shawn Oster | Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 11:25 AM
I thought perhaps I'd share some of the tweaks I made. I changed the background colour of body to #F1F6FF. I changed the margins to paddings in newsitemcontent and added a background color of #FFF
Posted by: Arvind | Thursday, April 28, 2005 at 01:45 AM
Thanks for sharing your changes, Arvind. I think I prefer it without your changes, but yours still looks very nice.
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Thursday, April 28, 2005 at 12:47 PM
The only change I made was to make the sort ascending rather than descending. I seems more logical to me to read down the page than up for newer articles then read the article text down.
Posted by: Ned F. Reiter | Thursday, April 28, 2005 at 03:18 PM
I wonder how possible this is. Could we have some way of setting the read/unread state within the newspaper itself? I have just two panes and its really annoying to set items as unread once I've read them, I don't see any option other than right clicking the channel name and hitting mark all as read. The other option in Feeddemon about marking all as read if you switch channels is not quite what I want.
Posted by: Arvind | Tuesday, May 03, 2005 at 01:29 PM
Right now I'm afraid it's not possible to mark items as read/unread/flagged/etc. from within the newspaper. However, like you, I also use FeedDemon with the news item list hidden, and I've heard plenty of requests to enable interacting with items from the newspaper. So, expect to see something along these lines in the next major release (2.0).
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Tuesday, May 03, 2005 at 01:55 PM
I like the links (new tab and sending you to the comments.) I would add a link to open it in an external browser.
Posted by: onnb | Saturday, May 07, 2005 at 07:23 AM
Onnb, I like the idea of a link to open in an external browser - I'll play around with that.
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Saturday, May 07, 2005 at 08:46 AM
To quote Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies...
"That's dead sexy!!!"
Posted by: David Orriss Jr | Sunday, May 08, 2005 at 03:15 AM