Stylesheet for the OPML for My LIst of Feeds

[egilchri]

Hello,

Feedburner offers an option:

Export Feeds: Get a list of your burned feeds as an OPML file

I would like to create a user-friendly web page, based on this list. Perhaps I'll edit out a couple of entries first. I thnk what I'm looking for is a way to apply a stylesheet to this opml that FeedBurner generates for me.

Please, oh please.

Thanks,

Ted Gilchrist

[matt]

Hey there,

Interesting idea with the OPML export. Unfortunately, there's no immediate, direct way to style this XML page without jumping through some hoops. You can see two examples of how to style XML by looking at our Browser Friendly service's effect on a FeedBurner feed. Here's the "Burning Questions" feed, which is from FeedBurner's official blog:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/burnthisrss2

If you View Source on this feed within your browser (don't use Apple's Safari for this purpose, however -- try Firefox or IE), you'll see two entries near the top:

<?xml-stylesheet href=" http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen"?>

<?xml-stylesheet href=" http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css" type="text/css" media="screen"?>

The first one applies XSLT styling, if the browser supports it. (IE5.5/6.0, Firefox/Mozilla, and Safari 1.3 all do.) XSLT gives you a great deal of control over how XML is visually formatted. Do a few searches on 'XSLT' to learn more about this open standard XML technology and how it combines with CSS to create very webpage-like presentations of XML data. XSLT gives you much greater control over how XML data is organized and presented in a browser window, but it's a fairly persnickety, complex language and syntax to use.

The second entry acts as a backup to XSLT for browsers that do not support it, but still know how to display XML documents, such as RSS feeds. It applies a CSS stylesheet to the XML. You should be able to adapt this stylesheet to OPML (it's just XML, after all) in order to achieve the effect you're looking for -- a 'friendlier' display of XML data.

I'd start with trying to apply a simple CSS style sheet to OPML, using our itemcontent.css sheet as a guide. Then, if I wanted a bunch more control over the output, I'd try working with the XSLT stylesheet. Sorry we don't have a solution for you that's ready-to-eat, but hopefully this discussion gives you some creative inspiration. Please do let us know if you come up with anything nifty; we might even feature you on our Publisher Buzz site.

[Eric]

The other catch, of course, is that this option is only available if you are logged in. A publicly available URL for your feeds' is not something we currently offer.

[egilchri]

Mike,

Thanks so much for that thoughtful reply. By the way, here's another, related idea. Suppose that I had the ability to richly tag my feeds. I think it would be nifty if FeedBurner had a UI for

-- dumping the OPML
-- applying stylesheets
-- presenting my feeds in an organized fashion, according to categorizing tags

Maybe I'm greedy here, but this would solve a longstanding problem of mine, which is to keep in sync a site that points to all my feeds, with the ever growing list of feeds I host on FeedBurner. I mean, even if I get the stylesheet working, I won't have the categorization.

All this may be a lot to expect from a free service. On the other hand, it would enable FeedBurner to be a soup to nuts solution, for my media empire. A rising tide lifts all boats, and all that ...

Ted

[egilchri]

By the way, just to clarify. I'm talking about dumping an OPML file, plus style sheets, that I could then host on my own website. A glorified, clean version of taking what FeedBurner is already dumping for me, and doing some major editing on it.

In other words, I would llike FeedBurner to build me a web page, that I can host, that will serve as a portal to my feeds.

Ted

[jessiec]

Hi,

Another possibility to get web page type view from your feeds is to use BuzzBoost on each of your feeds and combine it into one page. It will update with your latest feeds, you can customize the style sheet but you won't get categorization.

Just a suggestion,
Thanks,
jessiec
Feedburner Team

[matt]

True, Eric -- the OPML output is private, but once you've exported the file itself, you could of course host it elsewhere; I was assuming this sort of transfer deal all along (which egil has since clarified).

Creating a sort of "mini-catalog" for a publisher's feeds in the way you've described isn't something we've had a great deal of requests for in the past, but it's something to consider. Thanks for letting us know; we'll add it to our suggested enhancements list!

[egilchri]

Ok,

I'm impressed. Three FeedBurner employee interactions, and I'm still working on my morning cup of coffee!

Another satisfied customer,

Ted

[rrhobbs]

I used this post as a guide and came up with this opml file I host myself from my feedburner opml using the snippet you mention above and your stylesheet as a guide - I am also using a stylesheet I found somewhere when I was looking into this before, the author of which escapes me and they didnt mark up their file with a reference...

The big and small of it all is:
-the opml file doesnt seem to be paying attention to the css at all
-the xslt looks great in IE but FF doesnt seem to notice (its usually the other way around ;-)

This sure to out me as a hobby coder but this little project is fast approaching the twilight zone of my abilities
???
thx

[rrhobbs]

[matt]

I think Firefox demands you set the MIME type of the served file to "text/xml". It's this currently:

$ curl -IL  http://rrhobbs.com/feedburner/rrhobbs.feedburner.opml

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:40:13 GMT

Server: Apache 3

Last-Modified: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:45:26 GMT

ETag: "4c403d-1db6-47ba0a86"

Accept-Ranges: bytes

Content-Length: 7606

Content-Type: text/plain