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Show HN: A simple and powerful RSS reader for the web
68 points by g3eorge on Aug 20, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments
Hello HN! I've been working on this new open-source project called [name-redacted]. It is a simple and powerful RSS reader for the web with a modern UI, PWA support, and a built-in article reader.

Visit it at [link-redacted]

View our GitHub repo at [link-redacted]



Have you run this by RachelByTheBay's feed reader testing thing?

http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/05/30/fs/

Probably worth at least reading through this post: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/08/02/fs/ to learn from other feed reader developer's mistakes...


where is this tester thing? can't find it on either of those links or the pages they link to


find the tester page here - https://rachelbythebay.com/fs/ You will need to use the contact form to get a key that will enable you to use the service then you can plug your key into the url provided to see your test results page. Ez-pz.


A couple of quick suggestions:

* Provide some example feeds in the left side bar when the list is empty, so people new to RSS aren't just looking at an empty, black page. Maybe https://news.ycombinator.com/rss ?

* Provide an OPML import option so experienced RSS-using users can quickly populate their list of feeds and compare your project with whatever they are currently using.


* Sanitize inputs.

* Don't build HTML by interpolating arbitrary strings whose content you don't know 100% in advance. Actually, avoid interpolating at all if you can use a builder that takes care of all the escaping for you.

* Double-check that those `/getFeed?url=` and `/fetchArticleText?url=` (and any other similar stuff) don't recursively fetch URLs pointing to themselves or to the same domain they're being hosted at. And then triple-check again.


If you’re into local-first RSS, check out my reader which generates markdown files and can be consumed with any markdown reader.

https://github.com/piqoni/matcha


I tried adding my website (https://kevincox.ca) and just got a broken image on the sidebar. Tried another site and nothing changed. I don't see any way to manage these feeds either. Maybe it lacks feed discovery? But it should still be giving an error if it couldn't read the feed.


Looks like a nice start!

What I miss is good filtering and search within the feeds. Some readers make "smart folders". But usually the searches are pretty primitive: not searching metadata (like starred or read/unread, in or out of another named search, etc), lacking regular expressions etc). Also no way to apply changes (e.g. read/unread) to multiple selections, etc.

I'll look in from time to time -- might be worth a switch.


Check out my FreeRSS web-based portal I made a while back. Inspired by the defunct iGoogle.

https://github.com/robdelacruz/freerss

https://freerss.robdelacruz.xyz/

Unfortunately, it needs to be revamped or recreated from scratch because I can no longer recompile it due to the changes in SvelteJS.


Is this thing broken or just server hugged? Added HN feed - icon is blocked because of "Tracking", feed is not displayed.


Simple? yes. Powerful, how? No power to delete feeds once added, for example. Still I like the effort and will follow the project.


> Powerful, how?

It's a hidden feature, actually. Just think of all the power contained in only these two lines:

* [link-redacted]

* [link-redacted]

The more you look, the more power you can find.


How do I delete a feed that I added, other than deleting it from the `localStorage`?


This is really intriguing. I downloaded UnRead which has a lot of buzz, but I was fine with NetNewsWire from before. And I really don't use them that much. Much prefer the web browser.


https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml

Doesn't work.


The input to enter a URL is nearly invisible. I only found it on accident when I fat fingered the '+'.


Thank you all for your comments! Since this project is in its early stages, your feedback is much appreciated.


Thats "too" much simple

I need some customization features similar to feedly


Can you add Youtube channels to the feed?


Yes, you can. You can add it by its URL like this: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={CHANNEL ID}


I used to love using RSS readers to get my news, but at this point so few of the papers/websites I read actually offer non-truncated RSS feeds that I don't see the viability of RSS readers anymore. I guess they did that to prevent people getting around paywalls.




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