Wednesday, July 3, 2013

A climate blog index


In an earlier post I described my dabblings in RSS files trying to get a replacement for Google Reader, now passé. As a by-product, I posted a climate reader.

I've improved this, mainly by rationalizing the way it uses the RSS info. It's easier to extend to more complex formats, and more concise, so quicker to download. The new version is below the jump, with instructions following. I'm now inclined to call it an index, because that is what it is good at. You can't read content directly, only by link to the blog. That may change, but the limit is on how much can be downloaded.

Mainly, you can order by topic, blog, date or commenter, and you can subset on any of those. I'll make this version a page, which will be the maintained version. Some time soon, I'll have to include a paging version.
Update - the paging system is done. Top right there is a month selector, with Add/Set. Select a month, and either add it to the data shown, or replace that data (set). By default, the current month and last full month are shown.







It shows all the posts and comments that it is aware of. Updating is hourly. You can click the buttons at the top to reorder. Main posts are indicated by a background color.

You can select subsets. You'll see four selection boxes top right. If they are empty, everything passes. Otherwise, for three of them, you can enter names, and only those will show. You can select commenters, blogs and threads. Time is different. You can select one or two times. If one, it will show only posts more recent. If two, it will show posts between those dates.

On the right you'll see a selection panel. The steps are:
  1. Click on one of the selection boxes on left. It will turn pink to show it is active.
  2. Make a name appear in the Result section on right (see below for how)
  3. Click Enter. Your selection will be at the bottom of the list.
  4. You can click delete to remove the top item in the active list.
There are two ways to enter a result. The simplest is to find a line displayed that has the aspect you want. Then click at that level on the red bar that is to the right of the table. You may have to click twice. Your selection should appear. If it is what you want, press enter.

The second way is to enter the first few letters in the text box, top right, and then click. If it gets something else, add more letters. Again, when it is right, press enter.

To make your selection show, just click one of the four column buttons, depending on the ordering you want.

Issues


Some blogs don't easily pass comment information. Planet 3 is itself an aggregator, so I haven't really cracked that. As I mentioned in the previous post, SkS doesn't give comment dates, so I can't tell what is new in each RSS read - I haven't solved that yet.


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