Nick Bradbury

On Hiatus

In August, my Dad will once again undergo surgery which will hopefully ease the symptoms of his Parkinson’s Disease.  Given the experience the last time he had surgery, I’ve decided to take a few weeks off to take care of him in any way he needs.

Things will be quiet around here for a little while since I won't be blogging while I'm away, but chances are I'll still post to Twitter now and then, so feel free to follow me on Twitter if you'd like to hear me bitch about the U.S. healthcare system.

PS: I plan to disable all comments to this blog before I leave on July 30 just to make sure I don't have to worry about spammers taking over in my absence.

How to Use FeedDemon’s Newspaper Instead of the News Item List

I received a ton of great feedback on yesterday’s post about possibly killing FeedDemon’s news item list – my thanks to those who took the time to comment!

It’s clear that a lot of customers rely on the news item list, many of whom have been using FeedDemon for a long time.  But it’s also clear that many of these customers don’t realize that FeedDemon’s newspaper view has evolved to the point that it does pretty much everything the news item list does (plus a lot more).  So I’d like to take a moment to describe how to use the newspaper view as a replacement for the news item list.  I admit that it takes a little getting used to, but I know several people who dropped the news item list in favor of the newspaper view and now can’t imagine using FeedDemon any other way.

Based on the comments, there are three main reasons why people like the news item list:

1. It enables quickly scanning headlines
2. It enables locating previously read items
3. It enables navigating via the keyboard

As luck would have it, FeedDemon’s newspaper view offers these same benefits :)

Although the newspaper defaults to showing summaries, you can use the icons at the top right to toggle between full posts, summaries and headlines. 

Personally, I like showing summaries because that enables me to quickly scan the first sentence or two of each item, but you can make the newspaper look more like the news item list by switching to headlines.  Here’s the same feed showing only headlines:

 

Tip: If you choose to show only headlines, try increasing the number of items to display per page (Tools > Options > Reading).

And while the newspaper view defaults to showing only unread/flagged items, you can change the newspaper filter to display previously read items:

Last but not least, the newspaper view offers even better keyboard handling than the news item list. When the newspaper has the focus (Ctrl+B), the following shortcuts are enabled:

Previous item	Ctrl+ArrowUp or K
Next Item	Ctrl+ArrowDown or J
Next page	Ctrl+ArrowRight
Previous page	Ctrl+ArrowLeft
Flag item	F
Send item (email, blog, del.icio.us)	S
Clip item	C
Mark item read/unread	R
Open/expand item	Enter
Open item link	V
Open item link in new tab	T
Open item link in external browser	E
Reload newspaper	Ctrl+F5

Tip: You can change these shortcuts by selecting Tools > Keyboard Shortcuts > Newspaper.

Now, I realize this post won’t win everyone over – some people will still prefer keeping the news item list visible.  But do me a favor and try keeping it hidden for a couple days and see what you think.  And if you feel bold, try using the "Next Page” button to mark everything on the current page as read and move to the next page.  That way you can stop marking individual items as read and speed read your way through your unread items.

If it turns out you still prefer using the news item list, I’d be interested in hearing how I could change the newspaper view so that you no longer need it.  It would really simplify FeedDemon if I could drop the news item list, but I won’t drop it until I’m confident that the newspaper view is a suitable replacement.

How to Kill a Beloved Feature?

Yesterday I wrote about killing unused features.  But what about killing a feature that people do use?

This is the dilemma I’m facing with the news item list, which is the middle panel in FeedDemon (the one that displays a list of articles in the current feed - it’s hidden by default in recent releases, so you may not even know it exists if you’ve only recently started using FeedDemon).  I’ve wanted to kill the news item list for a very long time because it dramatically complicates FeedDemon (both from a developer and end user perspective) and it really slows things down.

I also want to kill it because I think it was a bad idea to start with.  See, the main reason the news item list exists was to mimic Microsoft Outlook’s one-item-at-a-time reading UI.  I figured if I made FeedDemon look and work like Outlook, then more people would find it familiar, and therefore more people would find it easy to use.  Since then, though, it has become clear that RSS is not email.  Trying to read your feeds the same way you read your email – that is, treating every item as though it has to be read – leads to information overload.

Anyway, I’ve downplayed the news item list ever since v2.0, and it’s no longer documented in the online help.  I could really simplify things if I killed it, but at the same time, I’m pretty sure I’d lose customers by doing so.  Most people don’t use it – but every time I’ve hinted at its demise, I hear from people who say they couldn’t use FeedDemon without it.

So…what would you do?  Would you kill a feature that most people don’t use in order to simplify your application, or would you keep it around forever to accommodate loyal customers who rely on it?

Update: Please note that I'm not saying the news item list is being dropped - just that I'd like to drop it!

Killing Features

Brent Simmons talks about the pain and pleasure of deleting features from your software:

I hope it’s self-evident that apps with too much stuff are, in general, bad. And that there are some features whose time has come and gone, and there are features that don’t get used much.

When working on a new version of the app, before I think about the features I want to add, I take a look at what I can get rid of first. It’s a quality-of-app thing. I think of it as making space for the new stuff — but first I have to take the wrecking ball to some old stuff.

Killing features should be a part of almost every developers’ playbook, but all too often it isn’t.  We’re so used to adding new stuff that we don’t think about getting rid of stuff we’ve already added.  A few years later, we find we’ve created an application so bulky with features that only pre-existing customers can understand it.  New users are so overwhelmed that they look for something simpler.

When I delete a feature, I’ll often do it in an early beta version, and then never mention anything about it.  If by the end of the beta period nobody notices that it’s gone, I’ll know that it wasn’t being used and I’ll remove it for good.  Or if only a few people mention it, and none of them say it was an important feature, then it stays on my kill list.

Sometimes I get it wrong, though.  I may remove a feature that I think isn’t important, only to discover that a ton of people relied upon it.  So I resurrect it in the next version (although I often hide it to keep it from adding to the app’s “feature heft”).

Of course, if you find yourself wanting to delete a lot of features from your app, then you need to be more cautious about adding them in the first place.  This was a mistake I made with early versions of HomeSite.  I was new to commercial software, and I thought that in order to succeed I needed to make everyone happy by adding anything and everything that was requested.  Sure, power users who requested a feature that got added were happy at first, but a few versions later, HomeSite was a toolbar-laden monstrosity.  It was supposed to be a simple application for hand-coding web pages, but I’d turned it into something that overwhelmed new users.

Keyboard Fail

Seen at a local retail store:

ANN: TopStyle 3.5 Trial Version

At long last, the trial version of TopStyle 3.5 is now available.  If you’re a web author/developer and you’re not already using TopStyle, why not give the trial version a spin? 

Download TopStyle 3.5 Trial Version | What’s New in v3.5 | More information

Yes, This Knee!

Last week I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee.  Just before the procedure, a nurse walked over with a felt-tipped pen and wrote “YES” on my right leg.  When the doctor came over, he confirmed it was my right knee that was being operated on, and then proceeded to write his initials above the “YES.”

Apparently this is how they make sure they operate on the correct body part.

That struck me as both reassuring and unnerving.  On the one hand, it was reassuring to know I wouldn’t wake up to discover a missing testicle.  But on the other hand, it was unnerving to realize I had placed my fate in the hands of a medical system that has to resort to felt-tip markers in order to prevent surgical mistakes.

In the end, of course, they operated on the right knee, and I’m happy to report that I’m healing nicely.

PS: Sadly, even writing on the correct body part sometimes fails.

Create Twitter Search Feeds in FeedDemon

TechCrunch brings us the news that Twitter has acquired Summize, which means that Twitter finally has its own search engine.  You can get your Twitter search results as an RSS feed, which provides a great way to find out when someone tweets about something you’re interested in.

FeedDemon customers can simplify the process of subscribing to Twitter search feeds by following these steps:

1. View this page in FeedDemon, then click here to install the Twitter search definition
2. Click the Subscribe button, then type the keyword you wish to search for and click Next
3. Select Twitter 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 a feed which will bring you the latest Twitter posts which contain your keyword.