Newsstand
Newsstand is a new Google News RSS reader for Mac OS 9. Stay up-to-date across more than 200 topics in 24 countries.
www.getnewsstand.com
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New Mac OS9 App...
- Thread starter Dronecatcher
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Hey, thanks for posting Newsstand! I’m the creator, and Newsstand has been a personal project of mine over the last few weeks to get more use out of my vintage Macs. Let me know if any of you have any feedback, and I hope you enjoy it!
My vintage Macs for the curious: PowerBook G3 Wallstreet/PDQ, PowerBook G3 Pismo (which I used to write Newsstand), iMac G4, PowerMac G4 Cube, 12" PowerBook G4, Mac Mini G4
My vintage Macs for the curious: PowerBook G3 Wallstreet/PDQ, PowerBook G3 Pismo (which I used to write Newsstand), iMac G4, PowerMac G4 Cube, 12" PowerBook G4, Mac Mini G4
It's great - thanks for developing and creating it
Working great on my G4 Powermac....
Are there any plans to port this to OS X, either Tiger or Leopard?
Google News is a major habit of mine, but for a couple of years got to be too problematic to visit using T4Fx. I don't use OS9 though, but do admire this app.
Thanks for this app ! Works beautifully .
Saw on your site you wanted to know if it runs on older system.
I could launch it, and it seems to run fine on Mac OS 8.1 and 8.5
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Also tried on a PB3400c running 7.6.1, but freezes. So I suppose the older one could get with it is 8.0 (on PPC).
Btw, the icon is nice too.
I'm getting a lot of interest in Mac OS X, so I may make a Tiger/Leopard port. It definitely wouldn't be as difficult as porting to something like Big Sur.
Cool. One of my major browsing activities is news and Google news is one of those. Having the ability to do that again on my older 17" PowerBook would be nice.
Thanks for this app ! Works beautifully .
Saw on your site you wanted to know if it runs on older system.
I could launch it, and it seems to run fine on Mac OS 8.1 and 8.5
View attachment 1796946
View attachment 1796947
Also tried on a PB3400c running 7.6.1, but freezes. So I suppose the older one could get with it is 8.0 (on PPC).
Btw, the icon is nice too.
That's amazing! I hadn't heard of anyone trying Newsstand on Mac OS 8.5 or 8.1. I'll update the website, and thanks for sharing!
And all credit for the icon goes to Ivan Feoktistov. I just tweaked it a bit.
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It's great - thanks for developing and creating it
Working great on my G4 Powermac....
View attachment 1796828
It's great seeing these screenshots from others! Thanks for sharing it!
My reply to you ended up being flagged for removal for some reason, but thanks for sharing these screenshots and details. I updated the homepage and credited you!Thanks for this app ! Works beautifully .
Saw on your site you wanted to know if it runs on older system.
I could launch it, and it seems to run fine on Mac OS 8.1 and 8.5
View attachment 1796946
View attachment 1796947
Also tried on a PB3400c running 7.6.1, but freezes. So I suppose the older one could get with it is 8.0 (on PPC).
Btw, the icon is nice too.
I guess I'll join the screenshot party.
$6 eMac checking in.
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e. I noticed that Newsstand is made in REALbasic, which should at least in theory make it easy to make an OS X version, if that's something that is going to be pursued. I don't know off the top of my head, but I think REALbasic can make a Carbonized app as well?
$6 eMac checking in.
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e. I noticed that Newsstand is made in REALbasic, which should at least in theory make it easy to make an OS X version, if that's something that is going to be pursued. I don't know off the top of my head, but I think REALbasic can make a Carbonized app as well?
I just opened REALbasic and compiled Newsstand for Mac OS X like you mentioned. The Mac OS X version of Newsstand runs on 10.4, but it looks like a port and the icons are messed up. It's definitely fixable, and there's enough demand that I'll release a Mac OS X version on getnewsstand.com
And a $6 eMac, I'm jealous! Thanks for sharing the screenshot!
This looks really cool. I don’t do a lot of news reading but I’ll check this out anyways.
Could it function as an RSS reader of sorts? I saw on the website you said to submit topics to be added; what if we could just paste an RSS link and add whatever we want?
Could it function as an RSS reader of sorts? I saw on the website you said to submit topics to be added; what if we could just paste an RSS link and add whatever we want?
Adding your own feeds and support for early versions of Mac OS X have been the top two feature requests for Newsstand. I’ll definitely be launching both
Hi all,
I was blown away by the response of Newsstand over the past few days. Itt got picked up by John Gruber at Daring Fireball, large Twitter accounts and iMore. Thanks for all of your support and extremely positive feedback over the days. It completely exceeded my expectations.
I just released Newsstand 1.1, which brings the number one requested feature to the application: Add your favorite RSS feeds! In the left-hand sidebar, you'll see a section labeled "RSS Feeds". I populated it with a few of my favorite Apple news sources. To customize and add your own feeds, go to Preferences in the Edit menu.
Visit http://www.getnewsstand.com to get the newest version.
Thanks again for the feedback over the days. I'll be working on the second most requested feature next: support for 10.2 - 10.6, which will include an aqua UI refresh.
I was blown away by the response of Newsstand over the past few days. Itt got picked up by John Gruber at Daring Fireball, large Twitter accounts and iMore. Thanks for all of your support and extremely positive feedback over the days. It completely exceeded my expectations.
I just released Newsstand 1.1, which brings the number one requested feature to the application: Add your favorite RSS feeds! In the left-hand sidebar, you'll see a section labeled "RSS Feeds". I populated it with a few of my favorite Apple news sources. To customize and add your own feeds, go to Preferences in the Edit menu.
Visit http://www.getnewsstand.com to get the newest version.
Thanks again for the feedback over the days. I'll be working on the second most requested feature next: support for 10.2 - 10.6, which will include an aqua UI refresh.
So, this might be a little silly, but considering that it does run on 8.1, would it be possible to make it a proper 68k compatible fat app?
I don't see why not. The limitation I have is that REALbasic 5.5.5 only compiles for PPC. I believe earlier versions of REALbasic support 68K, but I could be wrong. Someone asked me to also try making it available for System 7.6. I'll try compiling Newsstand with an earlier version of REALbasic to see if I can get a working 68K version.
I just checked this. Earlier versions of REALbasic that would compile for 68K Macs don't support XML parsing (which is how I'm pulling and populating the data). So I don't think a 68K version is possible
Ah, well, you tried, and I appreciate it.I just checked this. Earlier versions of REALbasic that would compile for 68K Macs don't support XML parsing (which is how I'm pulling and populating the data). So I don't think a 68K version is possible
Nice app, but can you add duckduckgo to it, for privacy as I don't want the google gods getting my information. thanks.
I'm--
It's an RSS feed reader. You're not even putting any personal information into it, if not any at all.
Oh this is great!! What a time to get into OS9.
It feels a lot easier to look at than 68k.news where the big fonts fill the screen quickly, and everything is a hyperlink. Topics are also so much easier to browse. All the icons and the layout is very pleasing and neat, a consistent and native-looking appearance overall. Great job!
I'm just an Applescripter and have no idea how something like this is built, so I also don't know how difficult these things would be to implement, but here's some possible future ideas based on the first impressions:
• It would be great if it could remember the Location setting when you quit.
• Some confusion with the categories, not sure if they're built into the application or if the categories come from Google. For example, the 'Interests' category feels more like a category for topics that just haven't been categorized yet: I would imagine 'Astronomy' to go under 'Science', '3D Printing' to go under 'Technology', 'Gymnastics' to go under 'Sports' and so on. I feel like there's also room for a dedicated 'Arts' or 'Culture' category, like you'd normally find in a newspaper. Now the arts/culture topics seem to be scattered under 'Interests' and 'Entertainment' and it feels odd to have things like 'Reality TV' and 'Classical Music' get filed under the same category
• Modern headlines are long! It's most likely not a problem on an emulator, a tower Mac with an external display, or some of the older all-in-ones, but on my clamshell iBook at the maximum 800x600 resolution, half or more of the headlines get cut short. Might allowing headlines to occupy two rows, or adding a horizontal scroll bar help? I have no idea how OS9 applications understand resolution or are able to change behaviour according to it, if at all. It'd always be a tradeoff though: Adding a horizontal scroll would mean constantly scrolling sideways while also scrolling up and down, possibly a messy combination. Allowing headlines to occupy two lines would restrict the need to scroll to up/down only, but it would break the satisfyingly neat look of having that document icon at the beginning of every row.
• I would love to be able to hide/disable/delete all the topics or sources that I'm not interested in; I tend to get information overload very easily when having to mentally filter through what's relevant, which is one of the very reasons why I find modern internet increasingly difficult to use, and am looking for friendlier ways to browse news, for example. Especially when you work in this text-based environment which is abstract, you have to mentally process the semantics of the language much harder than if you have visual stimuli (images) naturally drawing you in to some things while making you ignore others; This makes it slower to identify what you might be looking for, and of what capacity and time you have, you spend a substantial amount of time doing that mental filtering rather than spending the whole time on reading content that intrigues you. If you could trim it down to topics you know you're into, it would feel a bit like opening your e-mail inbox and only having messages that are consciously addressed to you
On another note, anyone know of any websites that list RSS feed addresses for easily trying out the custom ones?
Or, a way to get the feed addresses of Google News topics to add to the custom feeds? (especially if they're ones that might be too niche to be worth suggesting to be added to Newsstand as built-in ones)
It feels a lot easier to look at than 68k.news where the big fonts fill the screen quickly, and everything is a hyperlink. Topics are also so much easier to browse. All the icons and the layout is very pleasing and neat, a consistent and native-looking appearance overall. Great job!
I'm just an Applescripter and have no idea how something like this is built, so I also don't know how difficult these things would be to implement, but here's some possible future ideas based on the first impressions:
• It would be great if it could remember the Location setting when you quit.
• Some confusion with the categories, not sure if they're built into the application or if the categories come from Google. For example, the 'Interests' category feels more like a category for topics that just haven't been categorized yet: I would imagine 'Astronomy' to go under 'Science', '3D Printing' to go under 'Technology', 'Gymnastics' to go under 'Sports' and so on. I feel like there's also room for a dedicated 'Arts' or 'Culture' category, like you'd normally find in a newspaper. Now the arts/culture topics seem to be scattered under 'Interests' and 'Entertainment' and it feels odd to have things like 'Reality TV' and 'Classical Music' get filed under the same category
• Modern headlines are long! It's most likely not a problem on an emulator, a tower Mac with an external display, or some of the older all-in-ones, but on my clamshell iBook at the maximum 800x600 resolution, half or more of the headlines get cut short. Might allowing headlines to occupy two rows, or adding a horizontal scroll bar help? I have no idea how OS9 applications understand resolution or are able to change behaviour according to it, if at all. It'd always be a tradeoff though: Adding a horizontal scroll would mean constantly scrolling sideways while also scrolling up and down, possibly a messy combination. Allowing headlines to occupy two lines would restrict the need to scroll to up/down only, but it would break the satisfyingly neat look of having that document icon at the beginning of every row.
• I would love to be able to hide/disable/delete all the topics or sources that I'm not interested in; I tend to get information overload very easily when having to mentally filter through what's relevant, which is one of the very reasons why I find modern internet increasingly difficult to use, and am looking for friendlier ways to browse news, for example. Especially when you work in this text-based environment which is abstract, you have to mentally process the semantics of the language much harder than if you have visual stimuli (images) naturally drawing you in to some things while making you ignore others; This makes it slower to identify what you might be looking for, and of what capacity and time you have, you spend a substantial amount of time doing that mental filtering rather than spending the whole time on reading content that intrigues you. If you could trim it down to topics you know you're into, it would feel a bit like opening your e-mail inbox and only having messages that are consciously addressed to you
On another note, anyone know of any websites that list RSS feed addresses for easily trying out the custom ones?
Or, a way to get the feed addresses of Google News topics to add to the custom feeds? (especially if they're ones that might be too niche to be worth suggesting to be added to Newsstand as built-in ones)
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Just want to give a shout out to the wonderful developer who has given his time making such a fantastic, clean, useful app for Mac OS 9.