FeedDemon’s XSL-based Preview

Published on by Nick Bradbury

One of my favorite features in FeedDemon is the way you can change the style used when previewing news items. Given my history with TopStyle you might think that this feature relies on CSS, but in fact it uses XSL to transform the RSS feed. While CSS provides control over how content is styled, XSL also enables controlling the content itself – which means that FeedDemon’s preview can be extensively customized.

FeedDemon’s styles are stored in its \Data\Styles subfolder, so if you know XSL you can create your own preview styles. Even if you don’t know XSL, you can experiment by copying and editing one of FeedDemon’s existing preview styles.

I’m fairly new to XSL, so I’m curious what a real XSL-guru could come up with.

10 thoughts on “FeedDemon’s XSL-based Preview”

  1. Hello:
    I’m developing a site with xml and xsl. The front page is made with xsl (http://www.portaldelpluralismo.cl/default.asp ). In fact i made the xml for the front page and then i discovered RSS. The migration was very easy ( http://www.portaldelpluralismo.cl/rss.asp ).
    The hard part is the use of variables, but studing whith Saint Google it’s affordable.
    Salu2 (or Greetings)
    p.s: my tarzan’s english is obvius :) … but i hope you understand me.

  2. I actually dug through the file system to find these files when you first started beta testing and made some minor changes to meet my preferences. Nothing major, just font-sizing, font-family, and spacing. But with a little thought I think I could come up with several new “Styles”. Any chance of adding a easy mechanism for the user to “install” third-party syles. I know it’s not that difficult to add them now if you know where to look, but maybe under the “Style” menu add a “Browse for style…” (or something) and then you can pick a XSL file on the desktop which copies it into the correct folder on your hard disk. Just a thought.

  3. I definitely like the idea of making it easy to install new styles. In fact, something I plan to implement is a “Download new styles” feature which connects to a page on my site which enables you to quickly install additional styles. However, I doubt I’ll be able to implement this for 1.0, since my plate is already a little too full :)

  4. i just downloaded and installed Beta 5 of FeedDemon, and i have to say – this is simply awesome! :)
    i started playing around with XSL a few weeks ago, when i got the idea that “hey, why cant i use something like this to make an RSS feed at least look kewl in a browser?” so i created a lil experiment, called openBlog():
    http://www.forgetfoo.com/openblog/openblog2.xml
    i think it’s a great idea to add a lil option to allow one to select (or edit, maybe?) the XSL styles to customize their feeds for better viewing based on their preferences… it’d also be kewl to maybe see some participation? allow people to submit some styles and post them on your site for people to use, perhaps? just an idea :)

  5. This is a nifty little program, and I am amazed how easy it is to hook into various newsfeeds. Lots of fun! Have you thought about including an add-on for developers who would like to design and implement such newsfeeds on their web sites? Perhaps an additional piece of functionality for a future version of TopStyle.

  7. XSL is something I’ve been wanting to learn more about for a while, so maybe working with the stylesheets for FD to make something cool would be a good chance to play! :) Thanks for the push in the right direction.

  8. feeddemon and xsl

    FeedDemon’s XSL-based Preview. Nick says its easy to customize the way your news items look. I can’t wait to play…

  9. XSL is really powerful ! You can’t imagine what you can do with XSL ! I’ve been working with XML/XSL for 4 years now and I won’t be able to build any application without it…
    I’ll try to build up a new XSL stylesheet for FeedDemon and will let you know asap.

  10. Well, I tried to change one of your XSL file to add the author (using dc:creator element). But I actually don’t know how your XML document looks like. Does it contain this tag ? Could you please give us samples of the XML documents used ? Plus that, I can’t email you at your email: info@bradsoft.com. Is that normal ?

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