Yabfog

I'm still working on a significant rewrite of my OPML browser, Optimal, but I've decided to release the current working version in the meantime because it addresses a couple of significant usability comments I've had.

Specifically:

1. There are now links to expand/collapse all nodes, and
2. There is a new query string parameter, depth, which allows you to specify the initial expansion state.

• Changes

I've still got some work to do, so this is just a "hey, it works" sort of post.

John Tropea posted last week about an OPML hack for del.icio.us to which I responded with a more dynamic example and to which another reader asked, "Why bother?" Fair enough quesiton, and here's a better answer by way of example.

I’m using MySQLicious to mirror my del.icio.us bookmarks to a local database (for several good reasons). Now that I have a local copy of those bookmarks and all the del.icio.us tags and other del.icio.us metadata, I can remix it however I want.

The first thing I've done is create an OPML file on-the-fly, where every del.icio.us bookmark is rendered as an RSS feed item with the bookmark's URL as the feed htmlUrl and the xmlUrl is an RSS feed of a Feedster search on the bookmark's URL.

Here's the raw OPML file.

Here's how it looks in Optimal.

Notice that there is a query string parameter "addfeeds." Without this parameter, the OPML is simply rendered as a link list. An addfeeds value of "feedster" adds the search feeds. Eventually, I'll have some additional query values I could use here, such as Technorati.

Here's the source.

I'll be migrating this site and the Optimal site to a new hosting service Friday, so there will be some down time and strangeness, no doubt.

Relatively minor updates to Optimal.

• Changes

UPDATE: We're back.

Read more »

Thanks to Adam Green, who gave me loads of feedback, I've made quite a few enhancements to my OPML browser, Optimal.

• Changes
• Query String Parameters
• Use Cases/Examples

According to Inside Firefox - The Inside Track on Firefox Development:

For those who remain concerned, here's how the feature works. Firefox has a preference browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers which by default is set to -1. When set to this value, Firefox calculates the amount of memory in the system, according to this breakdown:

RAM	Number of Cached Pages
32MB	0
64MB	1
128MB	2
256MB	3
512MB	5
1GB	8
2GB	8
4GB	8

Bottom line: setting browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to something low will help avoid this memory hogging.