RSSNOW, a new rss plasmoid... requesting feedback.

[Rob Scheepmaker]

Thank you for your feedback. You make some good points:

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 12:12:21PM +0100, Sven Burmeister wrote:
> On Saturday 15 March 2008 04:05:21 Rob Scheepmaker wrote:
> > The applet is still young, and there's still a lot to improve. Some
> > ideas for features include:
> > - at the moment each scroller presents one feed... i want to be able to
> >   make the grouping completely custimizable, so you can for example
> >   assign 3 feeds to one scroller (usefull for feeds which are low on
> >   traffic). I'm still thinking about a nice way to implement this. How
> >   could you give grouping functionality in the configuration interface?
> 
> This would be very useful indeed. To begin with, you could simply show a 
> number representing the scroller when clicking on the feed in the settings. 
> That way users can pick the same number for feeds they want in the same 
> scroller.
> 
That's a good idea to start with... Eventually I want some nicer drag n
drop way of grouping the feeds. But by just showing a number I can get
the feature working soon.

> > - adept nicely to existing in the panel, probably grouping all feeds on
> >   one scroller.
> 
> The problem I see with this is that if you only show one item, the user has to 
> keep watching the applet to not miss an item. You would increase the chances 
> of viewing an item and reduce the frequency needed to spot it at the same 
> time, if you would show more than one item.
> 
> This would involve scrolling down rather sidewards, i.e. show e.g. three 
> items, a row each, after one interval, scrolling one item up. That way one 
> item is visible for three intervals while it moves from top to bottom or the 
> other way around. If you place a small feed-icon in front of each item, you 
> can even mix several feeds and still have a distinction. 

Good idea. If the scrollers can only show one line with an icon, there
would probably fit 2 or 3 scrollers in an average panel. This would
however require a vertical scroller. I can probably create an
abstractscroller class, and move all stuff horizontal and vertical scrollers
have in common there.
> 
> For panels I would cut off the headlines after a certain width and wrap the 
> lines if the applet's width is smaller than the average width of three/four 
> words, which I think might be sensible for vertical panels.

yeah, to make this work text will have to get cut off. For vertical
panels however, the current approach (multiple horizontal scrollers)
would work, because vertical space is not very limited in that case.
> 
> I doubt that users care about what source an item comes from and are more 
> likely interested in the content. So maybe one should not show the feed-
> heading (KDE dot news) at all in panels, since space is limited in those. The 
> latter would save you one whole line per scroller. The RSSNOW line currently 
> uses the complete height the applet gets in a default panel, so it would have 
> to go for panel use too.

Yesterday, I committed an improvement to also show the date alongside
items, in a fuzzy way ('yesterday', '1 week ago' etc). I aligned it to the
right on the title line, but that looks a bit crowded, and also the
scroll button hovers on top of the text. You're right that most users are
probably not interested in the title, so maybe I should just display
that date on the title line. Maybe make the title optionally visible. In
case of a panel I could drop the date, so a scroller fits on one line.
> 
> Another thing I noticed is that the feed-headline, e.g. KDE Dot news, is 
> replaced everytime, although it stays the same. Also, if there is only one 
> line of text and that line is replaced sideards, without any gap between the 
> two items, it is hard for the eye to spot whether there is a difference. Two 
> lines of text look pretty similar if you do not actually read them and lack 
> uppercase letters as most English sentences do. Upwards scrolling as described 
> above would solve this as well, maybe even combin it with a slight difference 
> in background transparency that moves with the item.

When I've made the vertical scroller for the panel, I will add an option
to use it on the desktop too. However, when space is not a problem, I quite 
like the horizontal scroller approach, since it allows for easy grouping of
feeds, and I don't really like to have all my feeds thrown together. I
don't like to have items from webcomic feeds mixed with items from
planetkde, since they're so unrelated.
> 
> Finally I noticed that even if I chose a desktop-theme with a transparent 
> background, the applet still uses a black background for the scollers.

Black? It's supposed to be a medium light shade of grey. Hmm, have I
forgotten to commit that svg file? I'll look into that...
Anyway: It's intentional... it ensures that the text is always clearly
readable, and it looks cool with the default plasma theme. The entire
graphic design is done by pinheiro btw. He rocks.
> 
> I like this applet a lot more than the older one since it is smaller and does 
> not waste that much space for things I have seen already and thus might even 
> fit into a panel/sidebar.
> 
> Sven

Thanks, glad you like it.

Rob Scheepmaker (pinda)

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