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Sat, 17 May 2008

firefox 3 and enclosures (recap)

Back in December and January, I worked on some patches for Firefox 3 that enhanced the feed preview page. I wrote a post about it back then... but I'm updating that post with recent screenshots and a better description of the work. The previous post was mostly about how great FOSS is.

The patches fell into two big features. First, I added enclosure detection to the FeedProcessor and then modified FeedWriter to show enclosures alongside the entries. This has two huge benefits: it allows you to easily tell if the feed has enclosures and it allows you to see what they are, how big, what type of media, ...

Second, I modified Firefox so that it allows you to associate video podcasts with an application, audio podcasts with another application, and all other kinds of feeds with a third application. The benefit here is that you can send media podcasts to an application that handles that well (*cough*Miro*cough*) and regular news feeds to a different application that handles that well.

Screenshot of Firefox 2 feed preview page:

Firefox 2 feed preview page

Screenshot of Firefox 3 feed preview page:

Firefox 3b5 feed preview page

Of the two features, I hear the most comments about the first one mostly along the lines of, "I'm so glad I don't have to view source to see the enclosures anymore!" The second feature isn't as immediately exciting. The implementation of distinguishing feeds is intentionally simple and there are a lot of corner cases where it doesn't work very well. Also, there aren't many applications that can really take advantage of it. I expect this second feature to flourish as Firefox development continues and video/audio podcasting evolves.

[ tags: miro | category: /miro | Permalink | View/Add Comments: 12 ]

Comments:

Posted by Firefox 3 ????? | ???? on Thu Jun 12 22:06:30 2008
[...] more, see Firefox 3 and enclosures by Will [...]


Posted by Firefox 3 ????? (v1.54) - ???? on Sat Jun 14 10:55:51 2008
[...] Firefox 3 and enclosures??? Will [...]


Posted by [??]Mozilla Firefox 3 ????? at ????? on Sun Jun 15 19:40:28 2008
[...] Firefox 3 and enclosures??? Will [...]


Posted by Firefox 3????? « ???? on Mon Jun 16 02:49:16 2008
[...] more, see Firefox 3 and enclosures by Will [...]


Posted by Firefox 3????? » ???? on Mon Jun 16 02:49:35 2008
[...] more, see Firefox 3 and enclosures by Will [...]


Posted by Firefox 3????? « ???? on Mon Jun 16 03:04:27 2008
[...] more, see Firefox 3 and enclosures by Will [...]


Posted by Comunidad argentina de Mozilla » Guía de campo para Firefox 3 on Mon Jun 16 11:26:54 2008
[...] más información, visitá Firefox 3 y anexos por Will Guaraldi (en [...]


Posted by Homolibere » Blog Archive » Firefox 3: What’s new? on Wed Jun 18 02:33:13 2008
[...] ???? ? ???????? RSS, Atom ? ????.: ?????? ???????????? ? ??????????? ????? (enclosures) ? ????????? ???? ??????, ?? ?????, ??????? [...]


Posted by Miro - Internet TV Blog » Blog Archive » Podcast Detection: My Favorite Firefox 3 Feature on Wed Jun 18 13:30:21 2008
[...] This is my favorite feature, of course, because it makes for a much smoother connection from web browsing to subscribing in Miro. And maybe the best part is that it was developed for Firefox 3 by the Miro team! It’s a perfect example of how open-source organizations can work together to give everyone a better experience. Here’s developer Will Guaraldi’s writeup of the new feature. [...]


Posted by Paul Irish on Fri Jun 27 15:07:41 2008
Thanks for pointing this out! What an improvement where I would normally not expect it.


Posted by Guía de Campo para Firefox 3 « Peluchito Jr. on Sun Aug 3 15:00:21 2008
[...] más información, visitá Firefox 3 y anexos por Will Guaraldi (en [...]


Posted by Sara on Thu May 21 20:56:57 2009
????? ??????? ??????????, ??? ??????.


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