Nick Bradbury

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Published on March 14, 2008 by Nick Bradbury

Back in Skinny Jeans: The real reason I left my career in tech.

Can Mozilla Be Easily Embedded in a Windows App?

Published on March 12, 2008 by Nick Bradbury18 Comments

Among the most frequent requests we receive from FeedDemon customers is to enable using Mozilla/Firefox as the embedded browser, and this is something I would love to offer. Unfortunately, I don’t see how this is possible.

Some history is required here.

Several years ago, Adam Lock created an ActiveX control wrapper for the Mozilla rendering engine (AKA: "Gecko"), and TopStyle was one of the first applications to use it. This enabled TopStyle customers to preview their web pages in Internet Explorer side-by-side with Mozilla – a very popular feature, despite its problems.

Unfortunately, the ActiveX project hasn’t been updated since 2005, and appears to have been discontinued entirely. Although TopStyle customers can still use this ActiveX control, it’s woefully outdated. This is a big problem because the ActiveX control doesn’t embed the version of Mozilla/Firefox that’s installed on the customer’s computer – instead, it relies on the version of the Mozilla engine that’s included with the control. This makes it practically useless, since customers want to know what their web pages look like in the most recent version of Firefox, not one from 2005.

Fast forward a couple of years, when the Mozilla team introduced a new way to embed the Mozilla engine. It’s great that this is available, but it’s far more complex than the easily-embedded ActiveX control (especially for applications that also embed Internet Explorer). And if I’m reading the docs correctly, it suffers from the same problem as that disbanded project: it requires third-party applications to bundle the rendering engine. Meaning, of course, that it won’t automatically be up-to-date with the version of the rendering engine the customer already has installed. So every time a new Firefox build is released, customers will want a new version of our software that includes the updated rendering engine. That’s not a sustainable path for popular third-party applications like FeedDemon and TopStyle.

Which brings me to my question: am I missing something? Is there actually a way to easily embed Mozilla in a Windows application, and can it be done in a way that uses the version of the rendering engine that’s already on the customer’s computer?

Vote on a New Name for FeedDemon’s "Next" Button

Published on March 10, 2008 by Nick Bradbury

In my previous post, I asked for recommendations on a new name for FeedDemon’s "Next" button. A lot of great suggestions were made in the 40+ comments to that post, so I’ve created a poll in the FeedDemon forums where you can vote for the name you like best.

If you have a preference for the new name, please cast your vote!

Can You Think of a Better Name for FeedDemon’s "Next" Button?

Published on March 7, 2008 by Nick Bradbury45 Comments

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how FeedDemon’s "Next" button helps you quickly blast through your unread items:

"This unassuming button marks every article on the current page as read, and then moves to the next page that contains unread articles. If there aren’t anymore unread articles in the current feed, this button automatically moves to the next feed that has unread articles."

I get the impression that few FeedDemon customers know about this extremely useful feature, and I think a big reason for that is because it has such a poor name. "Next" really doesn’t describe what it does, but I can’t think of another name that would be short enough to use as a simple toolbutton caption.

Can anyone think of a better name that’s not too long for a toolbutton caption?

What, You Want 10 More Tiny FeedDemon Tips?

Published on March 4, 2008 by Nick Bradbury4 Comments

OK, but this is it! You can…

…in the address bar, type define: followed by a keyword to get a definition of that keyword (ex: define:spam)
…toggle which actions to confirm by clicking the "Confirmations" button in FeedDemon’s options
…move between browser tabs by pressing CTRL+TAB and SHIFT+CTRL+TAB
…copy a feed URL to the clipboard by right-clicking the feed, then selecting Copy > Copy Feed Address
…import your feeds from Bloglines by selecting File > Import Feeds, then choosing "Import from an external source" and selecting Bloglines
…move the mouse over a hyperlink to show its URL in the status bar
…move the mouse over a browser tab to show the full title and address of the page
…drop down the address bar to revisit a page you’ve already browsed
…print a newspaper page by right-clicking in it and selecting "Print"
…decrease the amount of memory and storage space FeedDemon uses by right-clicking the root "Subscriptions" folder, selecting Folder Properties, adjusting the "Archiving" setting (try 100 instead of 200), then choosing "Apply to ALL feeds in ALL folders" after pressing OK.

PS: If you missed them, be sure to read part 1, part 2 and part 3 of this series.

Son of 10 More Tiny FeedDemon Tips

Published on March 3, 2008 by Nick Bradbury1 Comment

Yes, there are still more! In addition to the FeedDemon tips listed in part 1 and part 2 of this series, you can also:

…hide your subscriptions by pressing Ctrl+F11
…assign keyboard shortcuts to many features by pressing Ctrl+K
…prevent older articles from appearing in a feed by enabling the "Ignore new items older than" setting on the Advanced tab of the feed’s properties
…see how many total feeds, items, unread items and flagged items you have by right-clicking the root Subscriptions folder, choosing "Folder Properties," then switching to the Statistics tab
…click the feed icon at the top left of a newspaper to mark every article in it as read
…move a feed by drag-and-dropping it between folders
…prevent a feed from showing up in the attention report and popular topics by disabling "Collect attention data" in the feed’s properties
…re-arrange browser tabs by drag-and-dropping them
…clear a watch and run it again by right-clicking it and selecting "Rerun Watch"
…add a minus sign to a watch keyword to exclude articles which contain that keyword

10 More Tiny FeedDemon Tips

Published on March 2, 2008 by Nick Bradbury1 Comment

In the previous post I shared 10 Tiny FeedDemon Tips, but there are plenty more. For example, you can:

…find any feed you’re subscribed to by selecting "Keyword View" from the Views drop-down above your subscriptions
…find new feeds by clicking "Subscribe" and then typing a keyword instead of a feed URL
…change the search provider by clicking the arrow to the right of the search toolbutton (above the browser)
…change the sounds used for specific events by clicking the "Sounds" button in FeedDemon’s options
…change the number of articles to show in a newspaper page by going to the Reading tab in FeedDemon’s options
…disable a FeedDemon watch by right-clicking it and removing the "Enabled" checkmark
…visit your browser’s home page by pressing ALT+HOME
…visit the home page of the current feed by clicking its title in the newspaper
…change the sorting of articles in the newspaper by selecting View > Newspaper > Sort in Reverse
…focus FeedDemon’s address bar by pressing ALT+D

PS: Check back tomorrow for even more tips.

10 Tiny FeedDemon Tips

Published on February 29, 2008 by Nick Bradbury9 Comments

Every piece of software has them: those tiny little features that few people know about yet aren’t substantial enough to blog about all by themselves. FeedDemon is no different – for starters, you can:

…hold CTRL while clicking a hyperlink to open it in a new browser tab
…hold CTRL while scrolling the mouse wheel to change the browser’s font size
…close a browser tab by double-clicking it
…open the current page in your default browser by selecting Browse > Show in External Browser
…open a hyperlink in your default browser by right-clicking it and choosing "Open in New Window"
…search the current page by hitting Ctrl+F
…add any hyperlink to a clippings folder by drag-and-dropping it from your external browser (or from FeedDemon’s own browser)
…drag-and-drop a FeedDemon browser tab into a clippings folder
…select Tools > Search Subscriptions then right-click the search results to convert them to a watch or clippings folder
…expose hidden toolbuttons by clicking the arrow at the far right of any toolbar

Update: Here are 10 more tips to go along with these ones.

Allow vs. Enable

Published on February 28, 2008 by Nick Bradbury8 Comments

One of my pet peeves is programmers who use the word "allow" when describing their software. For example, "Product X allows users to create snazzy documents." I don’t like hearing "allow" because it sounds as though the developer sees themselves in a position of authority, and they’re giving the customer permission to do something (perhaps because they’ve been such a good little user).

I prefer the word "enable." Yeah, I know – "enable" and "allow" are synonyms, but my brain is wired to interpret them differently. To me, software which enables customers to do something leaves them in charge, whereas software which allows assumes that the developer is in charge.

It’s a minor semantic quibble, of course, and there are far more important things to be bothered about. But if I don’t bitch about it here in my blog, then I’ll be forced to bitch about it on Twitter, and Nick Harris does enough of that for the both of us :)

Downloading Podcasts with FeedDemon

Published on February 27, 2008 by Nick Bradbury3 Comments

If you’re new to FeedDemon, you might not know that you can use it to download podcasts (AKA: "enclosures") and sync them with iTunes.

When an article has a podcast associated with it, a paperclip icon will appear beneath its title, as illustrated by this screen shot:

Clicking this icon adds the podcast to FeedStation (a free "podcatcher" that’s bundled with FeedDemon), which takes care of downloading it and then copying it to iTunes:

If you’re subscribed to a feed whose podcasts you always want to download, you can skip clicking the paperclip icon and tell FeedDemon to automatically download all podcasts by editing the feed’s properties:

In my case, I selectively download podcasts for most feeds, but I have automatic downloading enabled for IT Conversations since I generally want to listen to every IT Conversations podcast.

FeedDemon’s online help has more details on this process, including:

How to schedule downloads to occur after a specific time (such as when you’re away from your computer)
How to copy podcasts to Windows Media Player rather than iTunes
How FeedDemon’s "safe list" protects against downloading executable files

Bonus Tip: You can drag-and-drop any hyperlink onto FeedStation to add it to the download queue. This works not only with hyperlinks inside of FeedDemon, but also those in Firefox and Internet Explorer.