This is a support thread for the Sage-Like web extension.
Post your feedback and support questions here and I’ll try to answer as soon as I can.
Thanks
3 Likes
First of all, thank you again for this extension. It has absolutely revived my preferred (only?) means for accessing and churning through the interfirehose.
I’ll leave it there because I want this thanks to stand alone.
Great to see you found a way to engage a little more with users as well. Thanks for setting this up.
There’s much to like about Sage-Like. One problem I’m having, though, is that when I restart it, some feed names are in bold, even though all the items for those feeds have been read.
I’m currently on vacation but I’ll look into it when I return.
Thanks.
1 Like
Hi, arielg,
I’ve enjoyed using you feed reader for the last several months. I’m encountering one issue and would like your feedback.
I use an RSS feed created by https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ for reading newsletters to which I have subscribed. Feedbro, Feedly, and others can read the entries created there, but I have been unsuccessful with Sage-Like. I always get “No RSS feed items identified in document.” Any suggestions? Thanks.
Hi robertfarmer1_z,
It’s great to hear you like my extension.
The RSS feed created by https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ does not contain links to articles that Sage-Like displays in the feed-items list and that takes you to a remote web page.
Instead, it has the entire newsletter content in the form of an HTML data embedded in the feed. In this case the intention is that the RSS reader should read this HTML and serve it locally to the browser without accessing any remote site.
I’m sorry, but this is not supported by Sage-Like. The main concern that pops in to mind is a security concern. The need to purge the HTML data from any potentially malicious code.
I have added it to my to-do list.
Great to hear from you so soon. I can certainly appreciate that Sage-Like does not support the difference you’ve outlined. Unless you have other advice given your personal experience – like, “I do not recommend kill-the-newsletter” – I’ll keep using Sage-Like but keep the “Brief” Firefox add-on RSS reader just for those newsletters. Thanks again for letting me know. Best regards.
Hi Barry11,
It’s nice to know you like Sage-Like,
The Check Feeds process, which refreshes the tree feeds status, does not check each feed item listed in the feed to identify if it was ever read or not. Instead, for better performance, it just checks the feed update timestamp (when the feed was last modified).
The bold status of a feed depends upon the feed update timestamp in comparison to when it was last visited* (clicked).
Therefore, the situation you describe can result from the following:
- The remote feed was updated and its timestamp has changed** but its content was unchanged.
- The feed’s Read\Unread state was accidentally toggled via the menu item or the menu’s hotkey “G”.
In the preferences page the setting Show total number of unread feeds and feed-items includes the number of unread items next to each feed in the tree. This offers a better indication about the feed content.
I hope this helps.
* The menu items incorrectly use the terms ‘Read/Unread’ instead of ‘Visited/Unvisited’.
** The update timestamp can be seen in the feed’s tooltip.
Hi Ariel,
I’m very pleased to see something that simple back. And I clearly have to speak my mind that this API change of Mozilla is big bullshit cutting of legs and arms pretending to be some small scratches. Long live the black knight…
That said, I’m still using very old versions of firefox because there is no replacement which satisfied my … minor needs.
Thus I would like to use the opportunity to ask for some features which have been present in good old sage2 in my order of importance.
- Have active links in the preview if they are present in the source so that a simple click can activate them or copy them to clipboard
Links active with sage2
Vs. no links in sage-like
2a) Load the preview picture as well
Preview shows image with sage2
No image in preview sage-like
2b) Allow custom css to style the (what you call preview) page
- I know there is a feed preview using the middle mouse button, something I could maybe live with. But having back this page by a normal left click on the feed itself would be great.
If you need more information about any of it or I can be of other help to implement it let me know please. Never developed a plugin for firefox, neither with the old API nor with webextensions.
Cheers
Schrotty
The old Sage had two columns of feed items displayed. I suggest that you add an option to adjust the number (1-4) of columns of feed items displayed.
Thank you for the plugin. I hope there is an Android version.
Hi schrotty,
I read your post very carefully 3 month ago and I have just noticed that I had not responded to it so please forgive my unintentional oversight.
All your comments were taken into consideration and I hope the next version will be to your liking.
Hi Xorgeo,
If I understand your request correctly, the upcoming Sage-Like version will allow the use of custom CSS to style the feed-preview page and this will allow you to re-style the page in the manner you mentioned.
1 Like
Hello Ariel,
thank you for reviving Sage. I used Higmmers for ages and was very happy with it and very sad seeing it gone.
A couple of observations (no critique):
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In Higmmers I had a Folder ‘RSS’ in my Bookmarks folder, but if I set ‘Sage-Like’ to that folder, most feed don’t get recognized as RSS feeds with the warning “Failed to get feed data. [ Feed format is neither XML nor JSON. ]”.
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Is it possible to customize the entries that get downloaded? I have feeds where only like 10 entries get downloaded while my (not-so-great) interims feed reader ‘Feedbro’ downloads 50 and more…
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Sometimes images don’t get loaded, but I’m not sure if this is a real problem because the feed WITH images is http://feeds2.feedburner.com/mydealz, that doesn’t work in sage-like and https://www.mydealz.de/rss/
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There are special characters that don’t get resolved: Sample: long dash: http://hnapp.com/rss?q=score>100
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Is there a database with css files by any chance?
Thanks again and happy holidays and merry christmas.
Hey Dawiesel,
Thank you for using Sage-Like.
As for you notes:
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I may have a vague notion about the cause for those warnings. If you could post here the links to the RSS feeds that were not recognized, I’ll look into it.
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This is strange. I’ve seen the exact opposite since some readers provide the option to restrict the number of displayed entries and Sage-Like does not. Could you post here some examples for those cases?
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I’ve tested both feeds in Sage-Like v2.1 and both worked and displayed 20 entries each. It may have something to do with the fact that the failing feed is ‘http://’ and not ‘https://’ and that your network configuration restricts unsafe web requests (‘http://’). Try changing the link to ‘https://’. I’ve encountered similar issues.
Now when I think about it, this might be the issue with the feeds in the first bullet and this solution may apply. Changing ‘http://’ to ‘https://’. Let me know if this is the case and if it worked.
As for the images, the structure of the RSS feed delivered by this site is somewhat unique. For this reason, the image and description of the entries are not displayed properly. This will be fixed in the hopefully soon to come next version.
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The long dash. You’re right. Thanks,
. -
I’m sorry but I haven’t created a collection of CSS files. But maybe I should post here a few CSS files that will serve as samples and/or templates.
And sorry for my delayed response .
No need to be sorry at all. Thanks for your response.
About your feedback (I keep it short, hope you don’t mind):
- All links are not RSS specific but just the regular page links:
hxxp://www.ohgizmo.com/
hxxps://boingboing.net/
hxxps://www.androidpolice.com/
hxxp://hnapp.com/?q=score%3E50
hxxps://www.blog.google/products/gmail/ - Cases where the download count differs
- The other solution downloads up to 50 or 100 items, where sage-like only downloads 10-30:
hxxp://www.theverge.com/rss/index.xml
hxxp://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWirecutter
hxxp://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/amDG - Sage-like downloads ALL (up to 200) and the other solution only 50
hxxps://cdn.kuechenstud.io/feeds/ldn-mp3.xml
hxxp://feeds.megaphone.fm/intercepted
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mydealz not working with https either (but except the title all the content is missing in my case)
Switching to https did not solve any problem in my case unfortunately. -
About css: a few decent examples to start with would be great!
Thanks again.
A few basic custom CSS files for the Feed Preview page that can be used as‑is or serve as examples.
sl-customFeedPreview-CSS-files.zip (5.0 KB)
Hello. I want to start by thanking you for making this extension. It’s probably my favorite RSS reader.
On the topic of feedback, I noticed that the original sage extension (or at least the legacy one that’s provided by Pale Moon) allows for two different types of sorting, “chronological” and “source”.
Chronological sorts the items by their timestamp, while source sorts the items by how they appear on the source page. Would it be possible to get this functionality in Sage-Like?
It appears that it is by default sorted chronologically. I noticed that the RSS feed for Nitter pages will sometimes sort retweets below normal tweets, even if the retweet was sooner than the normal tweet. Here’s an example:
RSS preview with Sage-Like:
RSS preview with Sage in Pale Moon (using “source” sorting):
I would really appreciate “source” sorting being implemented in Sage-Like. Thanks in advance.
Please, oh please, please, please … I am begging … you would make my very sad life that much easier if you could …
Allow open articles in a new tab option as a permanently toggle global option.
Seriously, I am so very appreciative that you have re-created Sage all but perfectly and are putting in the effort to maintain it. Cannot be undervalued as sidebar RSS bookmark reading should be a fundamental browser-native feature. Or at least a Mozilla-developer, default-installed addon that can be removed if users wish.
However I do not use Sage-Like as it seems many do. I do not use the feed preview pages. I just browse the article links in the bottom pane, hovering them for the description if there is one, and open them individually if I wish. The only sensible way for me to do this is new tabs. Otherwise I just lose where I am … oh wait, what happened to that site I had loaded (it has disappeared into the Back button history … if I can remember which ruddy tab it was in that has since been over-written.
The right-click, scroll, open in tab context option is simply RSI-inducing (literally), unnecessarily repetitive overhead for me.
If you open sourced the code I could do this work for you and most users would be none the wiser.
I seem to remember somewhere, you thankfully replied to this topic - possibly in the AMO review section - and left me with the impression it is a feature option you did not want to implement for some reason. Is that the case? I would appreciate your honesty so that, if not, I can look around and try to find another RSS option, hopefully. Without this Sage-Like is exactly everything I want it to be.
I do not mind the not remembering viewed/reloaded status (bold/normal) between browser sessions. Never have. That seems like a developer ball ache similar to publishers automatically creating ‘new’ feeds that actually have no new content. A glitch in the overall RSS ‘ecosystem’. Too much effort for developers like you to support and AFAIK never done any better in the previous Sage … or any other app for that matter.
Perhaps browser.tabs.create()?
Hello lmaothisisgold,
“Source” sorting will be there in the next version.
2 Likes
Hello inspector71,
I think this is not the first time this option is requested, and just for that reason I’ll try to add it in the next version.
But I’m curious, are you not aware that you can open articles in a new tab using the mouse’s middle-click? And if you are, do you find it uncomfortable or unusable?
And there are also the keyboard keys: Ctrl-click to open in a new tab and shift-click to open in a new window.
Personally, I like to have the option to choose whether to go ‘current tab’ or ‘new tab’ at my fingertips. 
I’ll do my best to add it to the next version and I’ll need to figure out how exactly to implement this without conflicting with the current mouse functionality (left-button: current tab, middle-button: new tab).