RSS Feed Reader Docklet for ObjectDock

[Ghostwalker]

I have a firefox plugin that adds a context menu item to ie to "open link target in Firefox" but it does not work for some reason(works in ie). It displays in the context menu in the window it just does not open the target in firefox(does nothing).

[Ghostwalker]

Here is a set of icons for it.(have not checked into making 3D yet)This is what I'm using.

[Smaky]

I'm not sure... I am using an Internet Explorer ActiveX control that has been embedded to the RSS Reader form... today many feeds include their contents in HTML form and I did not wanted to create a whole parser to achieve that.

matonga advised me on the IE ActiveX control or a Geckco based renderer... I haven't played around with the later but if I find the time to research on it I might end up replacing the IE ActiveX control... but I think it will take some time.

I have a firefox plugin that adds a context menu item to ie to "open link target in Firefox" but it does not work for some reason(works in ie). It displays in the context menu in the window it just does not open the target in firefox(does nothing).

----------------------------------------------------------------

Cute... thanks man!

Here is a set of icons for it.(have not checked into making 3D yet)This is what I'm using.

Do not double post - read the guidelines - mps69

[Smaky]

Sorry... it won't happen again...

Do not double post - read the guidelines - mps69

[matonga]

@Smaky:

Well.. it happened again (double post) (off topic)

@mps69:

Wouldn't it be easier to have vBulletin automagically merge the posts?

I can help with php code if needed (I dunno if vBulletin is open source, though)

[mps69]

@Smaky:

Well.. it happened again (double post) (off topic)

@mps69:

Wouldn't it be easier to have vBulletin automagically merge the posts?

I can help with php code if needed (I dunno if vBulletin is open source, though)

If you drop PM to Timan with your suggestions he's the one that looks after the code.

[semorena]

Hi to all

thanx for this docklet, but i have a problem:

i use this docklet for arabic rss news, and the new rss windows show text not good. and must to change the encoding of the rss-file.

for example: if you change the encoding of the file name "item14.html" that created temporary in "C:/Users/Me/AppData/Local/RSSReaderDocklet/item14.html" to the "utf-8" , then this docklet could work fine for other language such as arabic and armenia and ..

like this rss source link:

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/arabic/news/rss.xml

sorry for my english

i am waiting for your help

[Smaky]

Thanks for your feedback... I will take a look on this... I hope I could come up with a solution soon.

Hi to all

thanx for this docklet, but i have a problem:

i use this docklet for arabic rss news, and the new rss windows show text not good. and must to change the encoding of the rss-file.

for example: if you change the encoding of the file name "item14.html" that created temporary in "C:/Users/Me/AppData/Local/RSSReaderDocklet/item14.html" to the "utf-8" , then this docklet could work fine for other language such as arabic and armenia and ..

like this rss source link:

http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/arabic/news/rss.xml

sorry for my english

i am waiting for your help

[semorena]

Thanks for your feedback... I will take a look on this... I hope I could come up with a solution soon.

thanx friend

do you fix this problem?

my another recommend is that in new version, when user click on rss link on popop window, the window close automatically

[Smaky]

I am still working on it... I have found the problem, but I am having a bit of trouble to devise a solution.

On the other hand, there is not much I can do with the IE ActiveX control (at least as how deep my understanding of it is as of now) but to direct it to the RSS Feed item page... maybe matonga could give me some advise on that...

thanx friend

do you fix this problem?

my another recommend is that in new version, when user click on rss link on popop window, the window close automatically

[matonga]

@Smaky:

Maybe the feed or the HTTP response headers have the right encoding to use, somewhere.

When you make the item into an .html file, I guess you add

...... and stuff?

In such case. you can add the following into the

section:

...

Probably:

fprintf (fp, "", lpszCharset);

I guess this should do the trick with semorena's problem.

[semorena]

@Smaky:

Maybe the feed or the HTTP response headers have the right encoding to use, somewhere.

When you make the item into an .html file, I guess you add

...... and stuff?

In such case. you can add the following into the

section:

...

Probably:

fprintf (fp, "", lpszCharset);

I guess this should do the trick with semorena's problem.

thanx, i guess you must to set charset to "utf-8" like:

[Smaky]

@semorena:

UTF-8 is already included in the output HTML, the real problem is that by the time I write the feed contents to the temporary html file that is being shown by the docklet's window it already has lost the international characters.

@matonga:

Warning: Technical stuff follows ---

The feed does not contain a meta tag... it's an XML file with the encodign indicating the correct codpage used, problem is that by the time I am able to "analyze" the Response text out of the HTTPResponse object it has already converted the international (Arabic) characters to '?' and the feed is malformed (that is, not a valid XML document). Or at least I think that's what had happenend.

What I need to find out if there is a way, response headers maybe that would bring the correct codepage used by the feed - in this case

encoding="windows-1256" (From the Arabic BBC XML feed)

Currently I am doing something like:

BSTR bstrXMLResponse = NULL;   
hr = pXMLHTTPReq->get_responseText(&bstrXMLResponse);   
if (FAILED(hr))   
...

But when inspecting the bstrXMLResponse variable I found that it contains something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1256" ?>  
<?xml-stylesheet title="XSL_formatting" type="text/xsl" href="/shared/bsp/xsl/rss/arabic.xsl"?>   
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="[URL]http://search.yahoo.com/mrss[/URL]">   
	<channel>  
	<title>BBC Arabic News | ??? ????/title><link>http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/hi/arabic/news/default.stm</link>  
	<description>????? ? ? ? ????????????? ??? ????????????????????????? ?????????? ???????. ?? ? ? ? ??????? ? ????????? ?? ???????? ???????? ?? ???? ???????????</description>  
	<language>ar</language>  
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:29:42 GMT</lastBuildDate>  
	<copyright>???? ????? ?? ???????? ? ? ?,?? ??? ?????????http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/help/rss/terms/</copyright>  
	<docs>http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/</docs>  
	<ttl>15</ttl>  
	<image>  
		<title>BBC Arabic News</title>  
		<url>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/img/bbc_arabic_120x60.gif</url>  
		<link>http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/hi/arabic/news/default.stm</link>  
	</image>  
	<item>  
		<title>??? ??? ?? ???</title>  
		<description>??? ??? ??? ???? ??????????????????????????????? ?g ??????? ?? ?? ?? ??.</description>  
		<link>http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/hi/arabic/middle_east_news/newsid_7852000/7852533.stm</link>  
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/middle_east_news/newsid_7852000/7852533.stm</guid>  
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:51:47 GMT</pubDate>  
		<category>??????</category>  
		<media:thumbnail width="66" height="49" url="[URL="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45414000/jpg/_45414311_azam_49.jpg%22/"]http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45414000/jpg/_45414311_azam_49.jpg"/[/URL]>   
	</item>

As you can see, arabic characters are being replaced by '?' and the whole document is not a valid XML doc, so when I try to create a DOM object out of it the functions fails... I have been advised (at the MSDN forums) that I should do a codepage conversion, but I see two problems here... first, how could I determine the correct codepage to convert to before calling get_responseText. Then how such conversion should be done. I am still researching on this and I hope to come up with a solution.

@Smaky:

Maybe the feed or the HTTP response headers have the right encoding to use, somewhere.

When you make the item into an .html file, I guess you add

...... and stuff?

In such case. you can add the following into the

section:

...

Probably:

fprintf (fp, "", lpszCharset);

I guess this should do the trick with semorena's problem.

[Ghostwalker]

Not to interrupt but could you add drag and drop support for the links in the window, that way I could just drag the link to firefox to view it.

[Smaky]

There's not much I can do (for the moment) with the IE ActiveX control that is embedded in the RSS Feed Window... but what I can do is to add an option to spawn your preferred browser instead of openning the feed... that is... spawn the browser pointing to the feeds' link or to the actual RSS Feed (by selecting a particular feed or view all)... this way it would open IE, FireFox or whatever browser you select instead of opening the Feed window... does that sound OK?

Not to interrupt but could you add drag and drop support for the links in the window, that way I could just drag the link to firefox to view it.

Edit: I have updated the docklet to include an additional option that will open the default browser or whatever application suits you and pass the URL of the feed (or URL of the item's link) to it, this way you may get FireFox to open the feed or item instead of the built-in window.

[Ghostwalker]

That sounds great, thank you.

[Smaky]

Today I got some time to look on this issue... fortunately I think I am going in the right direction. Now, it is possible to parse the Arabic feed (and hopefully any other with UNICODE encodings) and show the items properly... it's still not perfect, since the integrated reader still does not show the characters properly but you can choose to show feeds in your preferred browser and it will work just fine... I will continue to look at this trying to figure it out completely...

Sorry for the delay, it's just the last few days have been quite busy here, my new son was born last week, I am taking the PMP exam on tuesday... so I got a pile load of thing on my mind right now.

I will need your help to validate this since I have no idea if the text being shown is properly rendered. To test it out just download the latest release.

thanx friend

do you fix this problem?

my another recommend is that in new version, when user click on rss link on popop window, the window close automatically

[Husaini HB]

Alright !!!, here comes another great docklet from Smaky !!

So far so great..Smaky, thank's a lot

[Ghostwalker]

Congratulations on the new Baby my friend.

[Husaini HB]

Congratulations on the new Baby my friend.

Hey, Ghostwalker, is it for me ?

[Ghostwalker]

It was for Smaky but if you have a new baby then congratulations to you also.

[Husaini HB]

It was for Smaky but if you have a new baby then congratulations to you also.

He he, no thank you Ghostwalker..I've 3 already:p

[Smaky]

@Ghostwalker, HusainiHB,

Thanks guys... having a new baby is just great... you do not get enough sleep... but it pays off after every smile!

[semorena]

Hi friend, Congratulations on the new Baby.

my windows is vista home premium with arabic and other "right to left" languages, and i could to parse the arabic and persian and armenia laguages from your first release.

my problem was with the integrated reader and it is still not show characters properly.

after you updated this docklet to show feeds in preferred brower, when i click on feeds, the show perfectly in ie and opera and other browser and i am very happy for this.

this docklet is my likely and daily feed reader.

thank you again, i like your docklet.

note: when i copy the data on the temporary html file in the notepad and save it again to html with utf-8 encoding (in a save dialog of notepad), i could to see it perfect and good in a your integrated feed reader.

the location of temporary html file in my system:

C:UserssemorenaAppDataLocalRSSReaderDockletitem0.html

Today I got some time to look on this issue... fortunately I think I am going in the right direction. Now, it is possible to parse the Arabic feed (and hopefully any other with UNICODE encodings) and show the items properly... it's still not perfect, since the integrated reader still does not show the characters properly but you can choose to show feeds in your preferred browser and it will work just fine... I will continue to look at this trying to figure it out completely...

Sorry for the delay, it's just the last few days have been quite busy here, my new son was born last week, I am taking the PMP exam on tuesday... so I got a pile load of thing on my mind right now.

I will need your help to validate this since I have no idea if the text being shown is properly rendered. To test it out just download the latest release.

[Smaky]

@semorena:

Thanks for the tip.... I think I am missing the BOM UTF-8 indicator in the file so it does not get properly recognized... I will try to add it soon and update the docklet.

Note: when i copy the data on the temporary html file in the notepad and save it again to html with utf-8 encoding (in a save dialog of notepad), i could to see it perfect and good in a your integrated feed reader.

Edit: Indeed it was related to having the file BOM missing... I updated the docklet and now the feed is being properly shown. Thanks for the feedback.

@Ghostwalker:

Not to interrupt but could you add drag and drop support for the links in the window, that way I could just drag the link to firefox to view it.

I know this request is a bit old but I checked it and found that the ActiveX control already supports drag-n-drop. Just select the link and drag it out... the problem seems to be with FireFox which won't recognize it as a valid target. I tried with Internet Explorer & Goolgle Chorme and both worked, whereas Firefox & Safari did not.