Nick Bradbury

Software Should Go the Extra Mile

Rick Segal believes that the "panic button" makes FeedDemon sticky:

"By putting this feature into the service, it can potentially prevent me from getting frustrated via the overwhelming inbound amount of reading to do which might cause me to throw up my hands, uninstall it and try something else."

Although I wouldn't say that my primary goal when adding this feature was to keep people from trying another feed reader, Rick is correct that easing frustration will keep customers loyal to your application.  Software developers tend to focus on features when talking about their apps, but keeping customers happy requires more than just features - you also have to prove that you'll go the extra mile to tackle the things that frustrate them.

In the case of an RSS reader, one of the most frustrating things for customers (at least, those who have subscribed to more than a handful of feeds) is the feeling of overwhelm they experience when faced with hundreds of unread items.  FeedDemon's "panic button" was designed to replace that frustration with a feeling of relief.  I often see people Twitter about the panic button and express relief that it offered to help ease their overwhelm.

There are a number of other features like that it in FeedDemon, most of which you'll never run into - but you'll be glad when you do.  For example, when you start FeedDemon, it checks whether another instance is already running, and if so, it switches to that instance so you're not confused by multiple copies.  That's a common feature these days, but FeedDemon goes the extra mile to detect whether the other instance is frozen, and if it is, it offers to shut it down.  Few people will see that feature, but frozen applications aren't uncommon on Windows (I see it with Outlook and Firefox all the time), and non-technical customers often have no idea how to deal with that situation.  So FeedDemon deals with it for them.

When I'm using an application that surprises me by going the extra mile to help me, my loyalty to that application increases.  I may be tempted by the shiny new features in a competing product, but I'm unlikely to switch because the application I'm already using has earned my trust by proving that it has my best interests in mind.  And trust is far more important than mere features.

Share Any Web Page with FeedDemon

FeedDemon's shared clippings enable you to easily share your favorite items from feeds you're subscribed to, but what do you do if you want to share an article that's not in one of your feeds?  For example, how do you share an interesting article that you stumbled across while browsing the Web?

Luckily, FeedDemon enables you to share any article, regardless of whether you're subscribed to the feed which contains that article.  I use this feature all the time to add external web pages to my shared items feed.

To share a web page that you're viewing inside of FeedDemon, simply drag-and-drop the browser tab into the desired clippings folder, or click the "Favorites" toolbutton above the browser and select "Add to Clippings Folder." 

You can also drag-and-drop hyperlinks from any web page you're viewing in FeedDemon into a clippings folder.  Even better, you can drag-and-drop hyperlinks from Internet Explorer or Firefox into a FeedDemon clippings folder - so you can share a web page even if you're not viewing it in FeedDemon.

Extending FeedDemon: Creating "Search Definitions"

Last week's posts which provided FeedDemon "search definitions" for FriendFeed and Tweet Scan were fairly well-received, so I figured it would be worthwhile describing how search definitions work.

If you open FeedDemon's Data\Search\ subfolder in Windows Explorer you'll find several FDSRCH2 files, each of which defines a separate search engine. 

 

The FDSRCH2 format is based on OpenSearch, which is the same XML format used by recent versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox for their search definitions.  Here's the FDSRCH2 file for Google Blog search:

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
    <ShortName>Google Blog</ShortName>
    <Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?q={searchTerms}&amp;num=10&amp;output=rss"/>
    <Url type="text/html" template="http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

The ShortName element is simply the name that FeedDemon should display for the search engine.  The Url element defines the actual search interface, and contains two attributes:

1. type: determines whether the search results are provided as an RSS feed or an HTML page
2. template: the URL to use to retrieve the search results

If the search results are provided as an RSS feed, then type should be set to "application/rss+xml."  This tells FeedDemon to add the search engine to the keyword search page of the subscription wizard, as shown below: 

If the search results are provided as an HTML page, then type should be "text/html," which tells FeedDemon to add the search engine to its list of web search providers.  The current search provider - which is the search engine FeedDemon uses when you type a keyword rather than a URL into the address bar - can be changed by clicking the down arrow to the right of the search toolbutton:

Note that you may include two URL elements in the same FDSRCH2 file for search engines which provide both RSS and HTML results (such as the Google Blog example above).

The template attribute is the URL for the RSS feed or HTML page containing the search results.  FeedDemon replaces the {searchTerms} section of this URL with the actual keyword(s) you enter.

Related: Extending FeedDemon: Customize the "Send To" Menu

FriendFeed Search in FeedDemon

In the comments to yesterday's post about Tweet Scan, Amit Agarwal suggested using FriendFeed to track product mentions and other interesting discussions.

So I created a FriendFeed "search definition" for FeedDemon to simplify subscribing to FriendFeed searches.  Here's how to use it:

1. View this page in FeedDemon, then click here to install the FriendFeed search definition
2. Click the Subscribe button, then type the keyword you wish to search for and click Next
3. Select "FriendFeed" from the list of search engines and click Next
4. Select the folder you want to place this feed in, then click Next
5. Click Finish

Tweet Scan: Twitter Search in FeedDemon

Twitter doesn't have its own full-text search feature, but luckily there are third parties meeting this need.  Tweet Scan is the one I use - it's a great way to find out when someone tweets about FeedDemon or TopStyle, especially since I can get the search results as an RSS feed.

FeedDemon customers can simplify the process of subscribing to Tweet Scan feeds by following these steps:

1. View this page in FeedDemon, then click here to install the Tweet Scan search definition
2. Click the Subscribe button, then type the keyword you wish to search for and click Next
3. Select "Tweet Scan (Twitter Search)" from the list of search engines and click Next
4. Select the folder you want to place this feed in, then click Next
5. Click Finish

You're now subscribed to an RSS feed which will bring you Twitter posts containing your keyword.

Tip: Use the OR operator to search for multiple keywords (ex: "google OR microsoft").

Throwing Away Your Code

Every programmer has faced this situation: you have to throw away code that you previously sweated over.  For whatever reason, you no longer need it, so you have to remove it from your program.

I enjoy this because it feels like I'm cleaning up my application.  I like to pretend that the old code I'm getting rid of is low quality crap that I'd never write these days.

But I wouldn't say it's easy.  It's like trying to part with all those old mementos in your closet that you kept because they used to mean something to you.  It's nice to have a clean closet, but as you're throwing stuff out, you can't help but remember how important it used to be.  In the case of software, you remember how much time you spent writing the code that you're now putting out to pasture.

I faced this situation earlier this week.  A customer reported that FeedDemon was seriously spiking his CPU when updating feeds, and when I tracked the problem down, it turned out that the spinning animation shown in the subscription tree was the culprit.

So in the latest FeedDemon 2.6.1 beta, I threw the animation code away.  And it was a lot of code - you'd think adding simple animation to a treeview would be no big deal, but getting it to look decent required a ton of little hacks that added up to some significant coding time.  I loved getting rid of all those little hacks, but I sure wish I could get back the time I spent writing them.

As an aside, people often think that developers spend most of their time on big, shiny new features, but the reality is that we spend far more time on tiny details like getting a stupid little animation to look smooth.  When you see software which shows great attention to detail, keep in mind that some poor sleep-deprived geek spent weeks refining those details, even though they'd rather be playing Rock Band.

Al Jaffee Fold-Ins

I was weaned on Mad magazine, and with the possible exception of Don Martin, Al Jaffee was my favorite Mad cartoonist.  This piece on Al Jaffee in the NY Times was a nice reminder of my Mad-infected youth - especially since it was accompanied by an excellent Flash-based collection of Jaffee fold-ins.