BBC News - Alpha Preview

I thought I’d share my initial application !BBCNews

http://www.paymentlabs.com/riscos/bbcreader

This is my first attempt at a RISC OS application for a long long long time, so bear with me!
There is still a heck of a lot of work to be done on it, but the work is largely bug fixing, refactoring code and smoothing the edges.
i.e. hard work!
(For example I use *IconSprites to load the sprites at the moment, not a big issue due to the sprite names being the same on each load – but not good)
But it is largely functional, and it is kind of nice if not limited.

My main gripes with it are it doesn’t yet open a web browser when the items are clicked, and it doesn’t support the scroll wheel.

Hope you like it so far.

Cheers,

Malcolm

That’s really good, I like that a lot. I was thinking some time ago that I’d like to do something similar to the old BBC News Ticker program as a learning experience on RISC OS. Having seen this I may resurrect the idea.

Is this software going to be packaged into !PackMan so I can automatically grab updates? Would be nice if so.

Ta,

Glad you like it!
At the moment it’s in alpha, so i don’t want it in any package program at this time.
However there will be a beta public release in I hope a couple of weeks, and then I would hope a couple of weeks after that it will get the stamp of approval for !Store.
That’s my current plan anyway….

I’ve done far more work than expected on it.
It’s ready for public beta.
It’s much quicker and a ton of bug fixes.
Also it opens the feeds in a browser with a left click.
And it refreshes every 10 minutes.

As usual it’s at https://www.paymentlabs.com/riscos/bbcreader

The next release will hopefully be in !Store

[Update] was a little bug there, I’ve updated the beta again

Looks like there is another bug…nm I’ll look at it again later. another beta is needed!

[Update] Quite a few more bug fixes since the last update…getting there!

[Update] Version 1.0 preview is avaliable, there’s not been any feedback so it looks like that’s v1.0

Excellent!

What’s the Verbose option do, and how do you turn it off?

(!BBCNews 0.01 alpha, Iyonix 5.18).

Ah the verbose option will alter the amount of updates in the toolbar in the main window.
However at the moment you can only turn it off/on using the menu on the iconbar when it isn’t refreshing.
I think the event must be masked out when it is polling, it just clicked when you mentioned it – I’ll have to fix that.

The latest version has verbose turned off by default. (Also it supports uniserver when you right click a link, so you can view videos etc)

I like the Adjust click option to send to UniLaunch, but I wonder why a URL launches IE on my PC when the default browser is Chrome and Chrome is already running…? (Not really your problem, I guess!)

[off-topic!]

@ Bernard: There are two ways to fetch a web document on a PC. The correct way is to ‘run’ a URL and let the assigned handler pick it up. The lame way is to throw the URL to iexplore.exe. It really bugs me when lethargic-as-hell IE8 loads when it should have appeared in Firefox… <sigh>

[/off topic]

[Update] Version 1.0 preview is avaliable, there’s not been any feedback so it looks like that’s v1.0

Well here’s some more. :-)

It seems to start fetching as soon as it’s loaded. It would be nice if it could be set to only fetch when the window is open.

It would also be useful if the number of items fetched could be limited to a specific number, and have a button to fetch the next N items.

The thumbnails are added to the Wimp sprite pool, and aren’t removed when BBCNews is quit. It might be better to use a user sprite area so that the memory is released upon quit.

To support the scroll wheel you’ll need to enable scroll events and add a simple scroll handler to your code. Please note that you’ll be sent 5 identical scroll events, each with the same scroll offsets. In order to scroll 5 lines, or whatever, you’ll need to call Wimp_GetWindowState each time to get the actual scroll offsets. Then add your scroll distance and call Wimp_OpenWindow.

Thanks Fred,
The initial app is fairly limited on what it can do, due to the coding design – if you can call it that.
It does need a complete re-write from scratch, which is what I’m planning to do – now I have an idea of what I actually need to do!
The code will form a base for the RSS Reader
Loading the icons into wimp sprite pool is pretty nasty, I deliberately named the sprites so hopefully the memory won’t grow and grow (didn’t check). I’m reading up on flex ;-)
The next version will have a load of options (using gzip, dynamic loading, large/small image selection etc. etc.) so I’ll add in your suggestions too, good ideas.

Bernard – UniServer (4.03/4) works fine with Chrome here on my XP work box. Indeed, that’s how I’m testing !BBCnews. Chrome’s my default browser, UniPrint’s set to use the default browser, and BBCnews opens a new tab.

Perhaps it is like file launching where there are different ways of doing the same thing under windows APIs, and Chrome isn’t set “everywhere” as your default browser? UniPrint also allows this to be overridden in its Launching tab. I’m not aware of any outstanding issues with this, but I’m willing to be proven wrong – perhaps drop to email though, as it is a little off-topic?

While your new application development is very welcome, could I remind everyone that before you release your software (even if it’s just a demo or alpha code) you must get it allocated to avoid causing problems.

As a side note, I strongly suspect we would reject any allocation which includes “BBC” in the name, because BBC Worldwide tend to guard their brand very fiercely and would probably come down on you like a tonne of bricks for using it without permission (our allocations system does not sort out obtaining third party permission relating to trademarks and brandnames, etc).

Thanks Steve, that’s a very good point as regards the BBC brand. I’ll have to change it to !UKNews asap I think.

UKNews? Don’t forget there are well known slang names for the BBC – would ROOL’s allocation guru consider BeebNews or AuntiNews (“aunti”, not “auntie” so it still fits with the ‘!’ prefix).

Personally, I like !BeebNews.

No mention of Beeb on that branding page, which is understandable because it’s a nickname.

FYI: I’ve updated the webpage and application:

http://www.paymentlabs.com/riscos/newsuk

Oh and Eid Mubarak!
Now I can get back to doing some coding again ;-)

Happy Eid!

Hmm, I hope you’ll update the screenshot when the news is a little less depressing. <sigh>

Nice to have a clear and obvious RSS reader for RISC OS. Hehe, if only Android could manage to do the same thing! ;-)

The latest version works well. Impressive. Looking forward to the ‘heavier’ applications in the wings.

You clearly had better luck than I did. I got an hourglass; Alt-Break and “OK” was rewarded by “The file is already open” (approximately) and a refusal to quit. The only way out was the reset button.

I have run it on both the Iyonix and BB and it seems fine. It obviously starts fetching when started – not sure what happens if it cannot connect.

Hi Dave,
This problem is due to ChangeFSI borking, you’ll need the latest ChangeFSI/ROM. I’ve not had this issue for awhile now so I am wondering are you using the latest !ChangeFSI that is included with it (v 1.39)
v1.40 should be out when the disc build is updated…
Of course this isn’t a blame game, I have discovered three different ways ChangeFSI was borking – only one of them has turned out to be ChangeFSI’s “fault” and that was fixed impressively quickly! The other two were mine – so current odds are on me causing it to bork :-(

I know exactly what you mean though, it should definately not require a reset though I’ve never had that!
I’ll have to add some more logic to try and deal with ChangeFSI borking.
I’ll keep an eye on this and see if I can reproduce it.
One thing springs to mind, it doesn’t support png’s so I shouldn’t really pass them to changefsi…

I’ve just started working on !RSS – a generic RSS reader. This will have issues such as iconsprites and the loading fixed (as well as a lot more features, e.g. using gzip for download, options for which image renderer to use for different filetypes).
Once I get each issue fixed, or feature completed in !RSS I’ll start backporting it to !NewsUK.

Dave: One of the closefile utilities normally helps in those circumstances.

I’ve put another update on my website, which disables download and processing of png files, this may help with the “Borking”.
Any issues/feedback you can email me malcolm at paymentlabs dot com

NewsUK is now on the !Store ;-)
Yes I need to update the allocation again, now there is a name change…

Now on version 1.12, usual places either !Store (older version as of now) or my website