Updated Expando Newspaper Style for FeedDemon

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!

Comments

[James Avery]

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

[Matt Zur]

Whoa.... very nice! I had the same issue as James with the newspapers... so I'll see if this new style is the ticket!

[Ken Meyers]

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

[Nick Bradbury]

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).

[Mladen Mihajlović]

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.

[Steve Lenehan]

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

[Arvind]

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!

[Will]

Excellent, really clean and definately improves FeedDemon's overall feel. Top stuff Nick!

[Morgan Pugh]

Make it the default style :)

[Bill Nalen]

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.

[OSUKid7]

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. :)

[Aaron]

Very nice, but my favorite remains Refined, and I hope there are future versions of it.

[Paul Schaeflein]

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.

[Nick Bradbury]

Paul, I like the idea of giving a choice of layout during the welcome wizard. Thanks!

[Shawn Oster]

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.

[Arvind]

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

[Nick Bradbury]

Thanks for sharing your changes, Arvind. I think I prefer it without your changes, but yours still looks very nice.

[Ned F. Reiter]

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.

[Arvind]

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.

[Nick Bradbury]

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).

[onnb]

I like the links (new tab and sending you to the comments.) I would add a link to open it in an external browser.

[Nick Bradbury]

Onnb, I like the idea of a link to open in an external browser - I'll play around with that.

[David Orriss Jr]

To quote Fat Bastard from the Austin Powers movies...

"That's dead sexy!!!"