Separate news aggregation vs. browser add-on news aggregation
J.B. Nicholson-Owens
jbn at forestfield.org
Sat Dec 6 00:58:30 UTC 2003
Rob Park wrote:
> The thing I like most about [this Mozilla Firebird RSS reader extension]
> it is that it's integrated right there into my browser, which makes it
> very convenient (the idea of having a separate RSS feed program is kinda
> silly to me, since the whole point of RSS feeds is to tell me if there's
> anything new on a page to warrant me visiting that page).
I'm mixed on this issue.
I used to think the same way until I considered scalability--I might not
always want to use Firebird. Other users on the same machine might not want
to use Firebird. I might choose to use some other Free Software browser. If
I do, I wouldn't want the rather large dependency of a browser (or browser
suite, in the case of Mozilla) for news aggregation. Also, I would still
want access to my aggregated feed information, no matter how I choose to
read the news. So, this makes me think I do not want the news aggregator to
be a part of my browser.
But on the other hand, there are some things in common between a news
aggregator and a web browser--try Lifearea (I think that's how it is
spelled) and you'll see what I mean. There appears to be no cache in
Lifearea. So Lifearea needlessly downloads site graphics it already
downloaded before (add Slashdot.org as a feed and you'll see it download the
Slashdot logo from Slashdot.org multiple times). I notice this because I'm
on a slow link. Lifearea doesn't seem to pay attention to my user CSS so I
can't easily style the text I'm reading to make it easier on my eyes and
artistic taste. There are probably more things I would notice if I used it
longer.
I'm guessing similar limitations exist with all separate news aggregators.
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