BloggerBuddy Hacks: Change the look and feel

With this post i am starting a small series of posts about customizing and maintaining BloggerBuddy. As you know BloggerBuddy is built upon the Adobe framework, AIR. This actually allows a programmer to use web development techniques and languages (HTML, Javascript) on a desktop application. What makes it unique is that it flawlessly integrates on online services.

So, essentially, BloggerBuddy is a web service, a “web site” if i may use the term. I’ve been asked before how you can change the width of the separator between the subscribed blogs and the feeds. It would be good if i added some sort of options page/window but, well i haven’t. So, a quick and dirty way to do it is simply to edit the css file responsible for the layout. Yes! There is a CSS file that controls the layout like every web page! The file resides on the folder you chose to install BloggerBuddy and it is called style.css. In there locate:

As you can see it’s a typical css block. This particular segment is responsible for the layout of the feeds list. What you need to change is the property “width” to something bigger or smaller according to your preferences. You can fiddle further with the file but i would suggest keeping a backup of the original one in case something gets extremely wrong. After you are done save the file and restart BloggerBuddy. Your changes will be reflected!

BloggerBuddy: Update to v0.5.1

The last couple of days my friend Sire brought to my attention a small problem on BloggerBuddy. There was a conversation on the update post here about it. What was happening is that on the individual feed view, i.e. when clicking on a specific feed to view posts from that blog only, the posts would be randomly ordered rather than ordered by date, as they should be. I also noticed that the same thing happened when you would do a search. Thanks to him i took another look at my code and i found out that i had a small problem. I fixed it and decided it is worth releasing a small update. This is now on version 0.5.1. All you need to do is visit BloggerBuddy’s site and download the latest .air file. Run it and it will update the program. Beware though! Make sure you keep a copy of the data.db file because the installation will inject an empty one! After updating then just put it back replacing the blank one. More on the update process here.

Thanks Sire! Oh, and sorry for doubting on the beggining. Also, stay tuned for more on BloggerBuddy, since i am planing a small “hack it” post.

BloggerBuddy: Small update to v0.5

Just two days have gone by and here i am with a minor update to my beloved BloggerBuddy. After a conversation with Raju i realized that if i want to motivate a migration from any reader to BloggerBuddy i should implement some kind of import. He gave me valuable feedback on the export type of Google Reader (which is the most popular among the readers i guess) and i looked better into it. I got a small export, tinkered a little with it and here i am with an update to v0.5 that actually adds this feature! The format that you can import is OPML.

If you are using Google reader and want to try out BloggerBuddy here is how you can do it. First of all download BloggerBuddy version 0.5 from here. Login to Google Reader, go to settings and then import/export. Download the exported data that will actually contain all your subscribed feeds. Finally, fire up BloggerBuddy and go to “Feeds” then “Import Feeds“. Find the file with the data and then a small popup will open with all the feeds contained. Select which ones to import and that’s it! When it’s done, hit “Feeds” and “Reload Feeds” to download the latest from all your subscriptions!

Please, if you find any bugs report them back to me because this will help me a lot on improving BloggerBuddy and making it better for me and all of you!

BloggerBuddy: Now on Beta version (v0.4)

I have been using BloggerBuddy since day one. It’s not like me to use the software i write just because i think that someone else has done it better. But this time i think that this program is the best on the market for me. It suits my needs perfectly. Since day one i have had a better blogging experience with it. No more painful page by page opening, no more comment tracking no nothing. I just fire up BloggerBuddy and there i have it. All the posts from my friends’ blogs that i haven’t read yet in one place. I can still see that question in your face “why not Google reader or any other reader for that matter?”. Well i like things my way, this is coded from me for me and it is way better and simpler. So enough with the rumbling. Using BloggerBuddy i found out that a couple of features were way needed in order to make the usage more pleasant. So here is what i added and in my opinion will make it way better:

1. Detailed loading view of the feeds. It actually gives you a list of all the blogs that the feeds are loaded from and ticks the ones that are done. In that case if any is not reachable at the moment it will be way easier to troubleshoot.
2. Added a way to edit the details of a feed. I know that deleting and re-adding a feed is lame so i took the time and added an edit feature.
3. I added a cool search feature (yah yah nice jQuery effects and all). I found my self wanting to search for a post i knew it was there but there was no way of me trying to find it through 20 pages of posts. Search was the way and i added it!
4. Added a feature to filter posts from a certain feed. For instance, let’s say you want to see all the posts that i have posted on my blog. Just click on my feed title, on the left list, and the posts will be filtered to show you only those.

These are the features added so far. They don’t seem much but they will make your life easier, i bet on that. Please note a serious thing though. If you have BloggerBuddy already and using it then before you update you need to keep a backup of your data. That is done by keeping your data.db file on the installation folder. Just copy-paste it on a folder before the update, download the latest air package of the site, install it and then copy the file back.

So, please take a look and let me know what you think. Or, even better, why not leave some feedback and give me some more ideas on what should be added to the next update? I’d love to hear that someone else, besides me, uses it out there

More on BloggerBuddy’s website.

BloggerBuddy: My approach to RSS readers

I’ve been upsent for quite some time now. This is because i was onto something. I was learning the framework of Adobe AIR. It’s a quite nice tool for rapid desktop development with Web standards. You actually use Javascript and HTML to code desktop applications. In order to find my way around this new technology i needed a project. Some people find it convenient to learn by buying a book. What i do is i throw my self into some serious coding. That is my way of learning. So, i decided to go on with a project. It is called “BloggerBuddy” and it is an approach of mine on an RSS reader.  I have tried many readers before and they all organize feeds in a certain way which does not suit me. The one i liked the most is Google Reader but i wanted something to integrate on my desktop. Besides that, BloggerBuddy has another advantage. It is designed from a blogger (yup that’s me) for bloggers (and that is you!). It has a nice feature where when a post is marked as a “commented on”, next time it tries to fetch the latest comment. This way you will be able to easily track the activity on posts you want to see how the discussion goes. So, go on and check it out. If you find any bugs or you have any suggestions take a look at the “Feedback” button on the left of the homepage.

Other than that, i have about three posts in a draft state for quite some time and i want to post them soon. So, keep on visiting!