NetNewsWire style hack – Show web page instead of feed

Posted: 7 February 2008

This stylesheet for NetNewsWire loads the linked web page instead of displaying the feed itself. It is a simple hack born from a question posed to the NetNewsWire email group yesterday. So Jan, here’s your answer:

ollicle-wittrodt1.zip

Linked web page displayed in NetNewsWire HTML pane

Installation

Double-clicking the contained Ollicle Wittrodt.nnwstyle package will prompt NetNewsWire to install the style in your Library.

Select Ollicle Wittrodt from your styles menu to use it.

Note: If you haven’t already, you need to enable JavaScript for news items in NetNewsWire’s preferences for this style to do anything remotely special:

NetNewsWire Preferences
- Browsing
  - News Items
    - Enable JavaScript

How it works

One line of JavaScript! Despite calling it a stylesheet it does not include a single line of CSS, just a very trim template file:

<div id="newsItemTitle">[[newsitem_title]]</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    location.replace(document.getElementById('newsItemTitle').firstChild.getAttribute('href'));
</script>

Coming soon

For those of you who prefer their feed reading to be clean, consistent and snappy, I have been working on a slowly evolving and revamped version of Ollicle Reflex. It has some subtle niceties I am very much looking forward to sharing, so keep that browning ollicle.com feed in your list for a little longer yet.