Ed Brill

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1. 1  Bruce Elgort http://www.TakingNotesPodcast.com | 12/4/2006 5:21:00 PM

   Ed,

   Can you provide a larger copy of the first screenshot? You know why :-)

1. 2  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 12/4/2006 5:37:28 PM

   I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but the "launch the embedded browser" approach doesn't work for me. I know the Notes HTML-rendering engine is more than a bit iffy. But if I can't view the content from the RSS feed inside of Notes, I'm certainly not going to use an RSS reader inside of Notes - I'll use a dedicated one. I don't have any interest in loading up every RSS feed's web site just to read content that is already available in the feed. If I want to comment, sure, I'll go to a web browser. But most RSS feeds include all the content for the very reason that most users don't want to visit the website every time they read a post. So an RSS reader that only shows me the subject of the post and then launches an embedded browser for me is never going to see the light of day in my Notes client.

1. 3  Brian Green  | 12/4/2006 6:28:59 PM

   Let's start a list of Lotusphere questions, shall we? I'll start:

   - Are the default feeds managed by Policy?

   - Are the feeds refreshed on the client or server?

   - Are the subscription settings saved to the users mail file, so they can be retried from any workstation? (think Sametime contacts list)

   - Must we use the embedded browser, or can it launch the default browser in a new window? (outside of Notes)

   - Is the source code for this RSS plug-in available, so developers can customize it.

   - Can it read password-protected feeds? If so, does it protect my saved passwords and encrypt the data for off-line viewing?

1. 4  Nathan T. Freeman http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf | 12/4/2006 6:40:56 PM

   Rob, I'm sure it will adhere to your location preferences for http content, just as Notes 7 does.

1. 5  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 12/4/2006 6:47:43 PM

   Nathan, that's not really my point. I don't really care what browser we're talking about. I don't want Notes load a browser and then go to the page. I want the content that is already in the RSS feed to be displayed inside of a Notes document, natively. In Ed's example, he clearly loaded his entire site when he opened the RSS item, rather than simply loading the body of the item from the feed.

1. 6  David Bell  | 12/4/2006 8:09:59 PM

   @3 - can launch browser specified in location doc.

   @5 - it does not load the entire site, the specific URL within the feed is loaded, which in this case was the one page with the article called Snow Day and shows Ed's content and all comments and the navigation on the left - it does not just go to the home page of the feed.

   This is launched in an external browser if configured, otherwise it uses the embedded browser. Which by the way, depends on the OS; for Windows it is the IE activeX I think.

   When it is launched in the embedded browser, it behaves just like opening any other document except it is HTML content.

1. 7  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 12/4/2006 9:46:26 PM

   @6 - So it behaves exactly as I thought, then. I think you misunderstood what I mean by "entire site" in the earlier post - I mean that it loads the full page referenced by the feed, rather than loading the content in the feed itself (which it has already downloaded).

   As I said, I think I'm in the minority as far as not liking that approach, but to me that makes Notes useless as an RSS reader. In a real RSS reader, that post shows up as "Snow Day" followed by the picture. No navigation, no comments, just the content that's already in the feed.

   What you're describing is like sending somebody a link to a website - they click on it and something (an external or internal browser) goes to that web page and loads its html. Some RSS feeds are like that, of course - they're set to only give the title and a link, and in that case we have no choice (well, we can unsubscribe, and I usually do, because I think that's a pretty annoying thing to force on your readers). But the vast majority of RSS feeds already contain all the html you need to properly render the body of the post in question. Ed's RSS feed does not contain his navigation or comments, but it does contain the entire content of his posts. I have used several RSS readers to view Ed's feed, and none of them have ever behaved the way Notes 8 is behaving above.

1. 8  Stuart McIntyre http://macsfacts.vox.com | 12/5/2006 12:19:40 AM

   @7 I tend to agree with you, Rob, it needs to just show the raw feed in a native Notes doc, then give you the option of clicking on the posting title to actually load the relevant page of the Website to see comments, images (if not included in the feed), navigation etc.

   Ed, what resolution are you running in the screenshot? Seems to me that 1024x768 is going to be the absolute minimum for Notes 8, with 1280 x 960 or a widescreen display being preferred?

1. 9  Thilo Hamberger  | 12/5/2006 2:56:22 AM

   @8: >or a widescreen display being preferred?

   Stuart? Half of the screen is blank??!!

1. 10  Stuart McIntyre http://macsfacts.vox.com | 12/5/2006 3:35:04 AM

   @9 yeah true true...

   But I would hope that in most situations the Notes 8 client would be showing something rather more relevant in that pane, like my email messages ;-)

1. 11  Egor Margineanu http://www.egmar.ro/ | 12/5/2006 3:46:50 AM

   @7: Rob, I agree with you. But let IBM expose a public version of Notes 8 and docs for developers, and only after we can comment on feature A or bug B.

1. 12  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/5/2006 7:06:37 AM

   I get what Rob is saying. This is a link list, not a "feedreader". I'll try to find out more about whether it has a way to display articles, summaries, etc.

   @7 I'm at 1400 x 1050. You're probably right that in the Eclipse-based configuration, Notes 8 will best run at 1024x768 or higher, but I don't know what the final spec will be.

1. 13  Mike Gotta http://mikeg.typepad.com/ | 12/5/2006 7:41:07 AM

   Ed, A feed reader plug-in is a good move, also demonstrates the consistent client architecture between Notes and Sametime. Some questions that folks should follow-up on:

   { Link }

1. 14  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 12/5/2006 9:31:38 AM

   @8/12 - I can't find anything in the Notes 7 help or release notes other than a "suggestion" to use 1024 x 768. In Mary Beth Raven's blog she said that starting with Notes 6 the clients were all designed for 1024 x 768, and that would continue to be the minimum "recommended".

1. 15  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 12/5/2006 9:33:24 AM

   Well we know the Notes embedded browser is gone (I posted that when I live blogged their session) and it will use your browser of choice. Now the question is will it launch into a separate window via a preference. I do like Rob's thought that we want only the feed entry from the click, not the whole thing.

1. 16  Stuart McIntyre http://macsfacts.vox.com | 12/5/2006 9:43:38 AM

   I am sure most readers of Ed's site will have their own views on what makes a good feed reader - Net News Wire seems to be the fave on the Mac platform I use.

   However, I would ask the Notes team to take a look at NetVibes { Link } as a good start point for how I would want Notes to deal with feeds - e.g. autodiscovery of feeds from blog URLs, customizable number of new entries shown, multiple groups of feeds (tabs in Netvibes), instant display of the feed content (already cached in memory) plus links to the original page etc. etc.

   As has been discussed on this and other sites in the past week or so, we all accept that Notes won't likely be the "best of breed" app for RSS-gathering any more than it is for the other 1001 things it does, but it needs to at least match the norms we all expect of a feed reader, else it won't get adopted.

1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/5/2006 10:07:21 AM

   So in a conversation with one of the design partner/beta sites this morning, it was explained to me that the feeds are populating a Notes database called localfeedcontent.nsf (and an associated template). The question then is, can the action of clicking on an RSS link in the sidebar be hooked to open or pop-up that content itself, and I don't know the answer to that yet. Still looking.

1. 18  Henning Heinz  | 12/5/2006 11:12:37 AM

   Your screenshot represents how I have configured my Thunderbird mail (and rss)client, so I like this kind of display. What a pity that the first public beta has moved into 2007.

   From my opinion, for the average user the current display makes sense.

1. 19  bill geimer  | 12/5/2006 12:13:39 PM

   Is this only in the single client / Eclipse version of the 8 beta. I cannot find it in the C++ Notes/Admin/Designer cleint.

1. 20  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/5/2006 12:16:36 PM

   @19 Yes, sidebar feature are only available in the Eclipse-based configuration.

1. 21  Nathan T. Freeman http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf | 12/5/2006 12:43:37 PM

   @16 - I can see what you like about the feature set at netvibes, but that screen is TOTALLY OVERWHELMING. That is a case-study for "less is more."

   Then again, so is most of Notes! :-)

1. 22  Chris Reckling http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideLotus | 12/5/2006 12:59:49 PM

   A couple of clarifications:

   1. The design point for Hannover is 1024x768.

   2. This isn't a full-blown feed reader - thus the title is "Feeds". It is meant to provide information in your peripheral vision, while you are in Notes.

   Chris

1. 23  Stu Leonard  | 12/5/2006 4:49:52 PM

   You don't know how RIGHT ON Rob's comments are. Lotus will create RSS Feed capabilities in Notes 8, good enough to add to a features list for advertising... but will it be a great RSS reader, one that we use everyday? I doubt it.

   For it to have any benefit, it has to be as easy to use, and "functional" as Google's Reader V1:

   { Link }

1. 24  Rob Novak http://www.LotusRockStar.com | 12/6/2006 11:21:02 AM

   Despite any perceived feature-function shortcomings for power-tech users, the introduction of RSS to the masses is a good thing. And even though it's only for feeds, I have a very specific application for this feature and am thrilled it's being included (so I don't have to develop it into my application). @Stu, I don't agree that "to have any benefit" is a fair way to treat any feature - unless you add "to me" :-)

1. 25  David Bell  | 12/6/2006 1:51:09 PM

   @7 - ok, got you.

   But doesn't that ability depend on what the feed is producing ?

   If the feed only contains links to articles, but not content, then that is all that can be used.

   I looked at Ed's blog feed. It contains title link and abstract, so you have to follow through to the blog page to get all of the content. I'm sure different blogs have different feed content and there is no single answer.

   As Chris says, this is not a feed reader - but having the client launch URL's in the embedded browser with a tab per document is fairly close.

1. 26  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 12/6/2006 2:55:58 PM

   @25 Sure, it definitely depends on the feed. As I said earlier, though, the vast majority of feeds contain all of the content. Some small percentage of feeds contain an abstract, like Ed's does, in which case your feed reader displays the abstract so you can decide whether to load the whole page. Rarely will you see one that contains nothing but a link, which is what this list of feeds provides.

   I don't think a list of feeds that launches a browser and load an entire web page instead of loading the content of the feed with an option to click and load an entire page is even remotely close to the behavior of a feed reader. I think Chris R. (@22) makes it clear that there's no intent to get close to a feed reader. And that's fine as far as it goes. But the expectations need to be set very clearly, because anyone who uses RSS at home will expect an RSS feed to include some content - especially if they use Notes 8 to display the *same* feeds they view at home, and at home they get content but in Notes 8 they don't. That'll be another case of "Notes sucks - Why doesn't it work like XXXX does?"

1. 27  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/6/2006 3:00:45 PM

   Well, it -does- work like Firefox's embedded RSS capability. Anyone know how IE7 does it?

1. 28  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 12/6/2006 3:54:28 PM

   @27 Well, yeah, but Firefox IS a browser, so there's nothing wrong with it acting like one. Notes is very definitely NOT a browser, so it has to launch one (with the associated performance hit) before it can let the browser act like a browser. If Firefox was launching a feed reader (or Notes - Ha!), the comparison would be more apt.

   Anyway, I know you get my point Ed, so I'm done beating this particular dead horse. Is there a wish list for 8.5 yet? *grin*