alert notifications: testing
karl
You can test it by holding shift whilst clicking the obamafox statusbar
image.
I haven't hooked it up to the obama alerts feed yet because there are a
couple of decisions that need to be made first.
* Are the alerts just for the "Obama Alerts" feed
[http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/09113710041361181058/state/com.google/broadcast]
or are they going to be enabled for any feed the user chooses (requires
adding "show alerts for this feed" in the options)
* The alert notification will work for Windows but not for macs (macs
use growl, so the alert will show up but not be styled correctly).
We also run the risk of the alert notification styles being affected by
custom themes that users may have installed.
We can alter the alerts to use a separate window (opens relative to
screen) or a popup (opens relative to browser). Both of which should
solve these problems. Popups may be a little more difficult to handle if
we want the sliding animation, as calculating sizes of hidden elements
is problematic. Windows are probably easier.
--
Karl Dearden
w: http://interclue.com/
e: ka...@interclue.com
Joe Solomon
While setting just "Alerts" for notifications as the default prob makes sense, I really like the idea for adding the option of notifications for every feed. This would really help people get their fav feeds automatically - I would imagine this opens up a small Pandora's box, though. If the user subscribed to 4 popular feeds, Would the setting be 1 (the latest) article per feed per 15 minute re-fresh? That might be overwhelming w/our current UI. Thoughts?
Dietrich - What do you think about the Mac issue?
All - Are there any Obama or US Election feeds you would like added to bring it up to an even 20?
Best,
Joe
Also -
I got this bit from my girlfriend's mac when I tried to install:
ObamaFox 0.4 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.0b5.
Dietrich Ayala
> sense, I really like the idea for adding the option of notifications for
> every feed. This would really help people get their fav feeds
> automatically - I would imagine this opens up a small Pandora's box,
> though. If the user subscribed to 4 popular feeds, Would the setting be 1
> (the latest) article per feed per 15 minute re-fresh? That might be
> overwhelming w/our current UI. Thoughts?
sounds like alert overload. i'm in favor of either per-feed "alert me"
preference, or just alerting for the editorialized feed.
> Dietrich - What do you think about the Mac issue?
karl tested on windows, is resolved.
> Also -
> I got this bit from my girlfriend's mac when I tried to install:
>
> ObamaFox 0.4 could not be installed because it is not compatible with
> Firefox 3.0b5.
the problem here is obvious: she needs to upgrade to fx3 final! :)
Joe Solomon
Dietrich Ayala
- updated the alerts feed URL to the new del.icio.us account
(http://delicious.com/obamafox)
- enabled notifications for entries from the alerts feed
- fix for only notifying about new entries
xpi attached. can you test to see if there's any issues?
-d
Joe Solomon
When I first installed the plugin, the last pop up came up when I re-opened Firefox, which may be a bit unsettling to new users. Is it possible to add a rule to not show the pop up on browser start up? This would basically mean users wouldn't get past notifications..
Also - Can we add Digg to the feed? ;) http://feeds.digg.com/digg/topic/2008_us_elections/popular.rss
karl
Joe Solomon wrote:
> Just got a chance to test. Added a bookmark to the Alerts feed via
> delicious (http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/obamafox/obamafox) and I saw
> the pop-up notification 10 minutes later - Amazing!
good stuff.
> When I first installed the plugin, the last pop up came up when I re-opened
> Firefox, which may be a bit unsettling to new users. Is it possible to add
> a rule to not show the pop up on browser start up? This would basically mean
> users wouldn't get past notifications..
Hmmm, Dietrich can you look into this, you know a lot more about how the
bookmarking/feeds system works than I do.
> Also - the feed menu no longer shows up on start up, Is it possible to
> re-activate to help make it super clear to new users that they can choose
> their fav feeds right after install.
Options menu is designed to activate on first install, will alter to
show on update as well as on first install.
> Also - Can we add Digg to the feed? ;)
> http://feeds.digg.com/digg/topic/2008_us_elections/popular.rss
> And replace Newsweek with New York Times -
> http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/feed/
Done.
I'll get onto the "show feeds options on update/install" tonight (now()
+ 8h).
--
Karl
Dietrich Ayala
>> Firefox, which may be a bit unsettling to new users. Is it possible to add
>> a rule to not show the pop up on browser start up? This would basically mean
>> users wouldn't get past notifications..
Hrm, there's no simple way to do this. Right now we show alerts for
every item in the feed, and mark each as having been shown.
Instead, what if we waited for a few seconds to make sure the feed has
been updated fully, and then only showed the most-recent item in the
feed? It's kind of hacky, and could miss some alerts if several come
in quick succession, but I think it'll be the best we can get right
now.
The fundamental problem is that we should be using a push technology
for this, instead of polling.