A new web newsreader

SomeDude lovelydear at mailmetrash.com
Thu Dec 8 04:16:20 PST 2011


On 2011-Dec-08 10:55:51+00:00, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> As mentioned previously, I've been working on a web frontend 
> for the DigitalMars NNTP server. I collected ideas and 
> inspiration from the several threads on this topic in the last 
> few weeks, and now I think that the result is ready for beta 
> testing and general use.
>
> The current (temporary) URL is:
>
> http://dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net/discussion/
>
> Here are the highlights:
>
> * Written in D, pull requests are welcome.
>  https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed
>
> * It remembers which posts you've seen on an individual post 
> basis.
>  By default, read post history is stored in a compressed cookie.
>
> * Optionally, you can register an account, which will store 
> your preferences and read post history in the server database. 
> There is no e-mail confirmation etc.
>
> * You can choose any of three view modes:
>  1) The default "basic" view, a forum-like view with paged 
> linear threads (posts are chronologically-ordered).
>  2) "Threaded", with threaded group index, and a thread 
> overview under the single post display, similar to mailing list 
> archives.
>  3) "Horizontal-split" - a JavaScript-powered interface with a 
> split view and keyboard shortcuts, similar to a mail or 
> newsgroup client.
>
>  There was also another view mode, "nested", which presented 
> all messages in a thread in full, arranged in their 
> hierarchical order (with replies being slightly indented from 
> their parents). However, the idea is not compatible with paging 
> and and it didn't look well at high nesting levels, so I 
> removed it.
>
>  For the sake of link consistency and preserving functionality 
> of links between JavaScript and no-JavaScript users, the 
> "horizontal-split" view mode requires support for the HTML5 
> history.pushState feature. This feature is present in all 
> modern browsers except Internet Explorer.
>
> * The URL scheme attempts to be simple and consistent. There is 
> one way to link to an individual post: {site 
> root}/post/{message-id stripped of angle brackets}. Post links 
> will open in the user's selected view mode.
>
> * Posted messages are screened for spam using several online 
> services (incl. Akismet). A failed spam check, or an attempt to 
> post within 1 minute of another posting attempt, will trigger a 
> CAPTCHA. Solving the CAPTCHA will bypass spam/flood checks (no 
> messages will be silently discarded). The posting form should 
> be protected against XSRF attacks.
>
> * The posted message and quoted text formatters understand 
> format=flowed and delsp=yes (RFC 2646, 3676). If all mail/news 
> software did, there would be no problems with broken quote 
> lines - I believe the current web interfaces on digitalmars.com 
> are the most notorious offenders.
>
> * Multipart messages and attachments are decoded and are 
> viewable / downloadable, although there is currently no support 
> for posting attachments.
>  I have also added support for decoding inline uuencoded 
> attachments, which can be often found in older posts.
>
> * Page formatting is affected by the width of the browser 
> window - in smaller viewports, the font becomes smaller and the 
> left sidebar is hidden away. I don't expect this feature to be 
> perfect due to the great variety of installed fonts, but I hope 
> it will be helpful nevertheless.
>
> * The web interface gets a perfect score of 100/100 on the 
> Google Page Speed test, and generates valid HTML 4.01 Strict.
>
> There are more ideas for possible future improvements (e.g. 
> attachment posting support and full-text search), but I think 
> these are beyond the scope of "version 1.0". I'm somewhat 
> exhausted right now, and need to catch up on other projects, 
> so, with your feedback, we can revisit future improvements a 
> while later.
>
> If there is interest to use DFeed as the main web interface 
> (and thus make it available from a D-related domain), I think 
> the best way to do this would be to redirect two subdomains to 
> my server (a separate subdomain for attachments, for security). 
> It would also be possible to replace the old web interfaces 
> with working redirects to DFeed.

BTW, on Firefox 3.6.24, it says that pushState is not supported, 
nevertheless the horizontal-split works fine and I like it very 
much. I would like to be able to resize the left window, though, 
as with deeply nested dicussions, I'm affraid we might run out of 
space (although I haven't seen it in the last 40 pages or so of 
discussions).


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