[vicott]

For those of you who do not wish to install any RSS aggregators on your PPC, but still wish to read RSS feeds on your PPC, I've created a simple dynamic webpage that converts any RSS feed to a mobile-friendly page. So you can use it to subscribe to RSS feeds and yet only need to use softwares like WOL, AvantGo or even Mobile Favorites to sync the contents to your PPC.

Guides on usage:

Base link: http://mobile-sg.com/pie/rss.asp?s=

Instructions: Paste the url of the RSS feed to the end of the base link, e.g. http://mobile-sg.com/pie/rss.asp?s=http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/xml/

For convenience, you can also use this Form Link.

Notes: Use the link u have "created" to use for your WOL/AvantGo/Mobile Favorites. link depth is not required for your sync (max level of 1 and max offsite level of 1 is sufficient for WOL), unless u want to sync the originating site as well, which is quite unlikely to be mobile-friendly. Also, please check that the RSS Feed can be converted to HTML successfully before u add it to your subscribed channels.

please try it out for youself, and give me any suggestions to improve, whether additional RSS feed informations should be provided or any feedback on the formatting. If there are any bugs, please let me know also. All feedback are welcomed!

[vicott]

Updates

I've solved the issue of "&" in the URL of the RSS feed. I've also created a simple form to obtain the full URL of the converted RSS feed. For this form, u have to use on a internet browser that supports Javascripts, i would recommend u do it on the PC though. Then u can get the URL of the converted RSS feed and copy/paste this link to your Mobile Favorites or WOL or create a custom AvantGo channel, etc. Do anything u want to it :smile:

and another note: i think it does not work very well with MSN Spaces which have chinese text :brooding:

So, pls use this form link to convert your RSS feeds to HTML. The instructions given in the earlier post will no longer be important. Again, I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

Hopefully someone can assure me it works for offline mode (downloads using AvantGo, Mobile Favorites, WOL, etc)

Form Link

[John Teoh]

Hi vicott

Tested with WOL. Working fine.

Cheers
John

[vicott]

Thanks for the confirmations :smile:

For those who are unaware of PPCSG's new RSS Feeds, here are the links :wink: :
RSS Feed: http://www.ppcsg.com....php?a=out&f=27,28...how=12&type=rss
RSS Feed Converted to Mobile-Friendly Page: http://mobile-sg.com...how=12&type=rss

[mimosa]

Hi Vicott,
Tested with WOL on Business Times RSS feed and it works fine. The only observation is that the file size is quite large, about 455K for only one page of "All Headlines". There is no second level access and thus I feel the file size is alot larger than Straits Times Mobile.
By the way, thank you very much for coming up with the converter.

This post has been edited by mimosa: 17 May 2005 - 08:43 PM

[vicott]

just curious, u set link depth to 1 or more huh? most RSS feeds link to full webpages which are not mobile-friendly. perhaps that explains why the file size is so large for your case. if u do not set any link dept, i.e. only the RSS feed alone without any links, the file size is really very small.

Actually, the purpose of this convertor is to substitute RSS aggregators, so you don't need to install any additional softwares on your PPC to view RSS feeds. it would be handy if some websites do not provide mobile-friendly sites, but have RSS feeds. if there is a mobile-friendly site, I would recommend going for that if u need contents more detailed than the RSS feed. RSS aggregators do not download the links anyway, so this link/file size is not really a issue.

Thanks for the feedback anyway

[mimosa]

Below was my original setting when I posted the details above:
Maximum level = 2
Maximum off-site level = 1
Thereafter, I experiment on a combination of the above and realized the Maximum level is not important but what is important is the Maximum off-site level. If I set this to anything above 1, WOL will grab the rich contents into the PPC making the file size to go up to a few M. Eventually, I change the setting back to 1, 1. The file size drop back to about 400K but again all I can read is the first page ( which is the All Headlines page that I linked ). When I click on any subject heading, it says this page is not available for offline viewing.

[vicott]

actually for RSS feeds, the most ideal link depth is 0 (= max level of 1), since the links lead to webpages not optimized for small screen and likely to have alot of images also which will result in huge file size. I think there might be a misunderstanding also. Sorry if I did not make myself clear. The script i provided only converts the RSS feed, but does not optimize any of the webpages that are being linked in the RSS feed.

[benson_tan2001]

Hi! vicott,

Why I keep getting this error message from this Web site: www.todayonline.com from your this Web site: http://mobile-sg.com...odayonline.com/

RSSContentFeed error '800403e9'

GetRSS: XML error: The character '>' was expected.

/pie/rss_content_feed_class.1.asp, line 626

Will you advise me how to use it? Thanks!

Best Regards,
Benson Tan

[vicott]

Some points to note:
1) The script only works for the URL of the RSS feed
2) It may not work well with some RSS feeds
3) It doesn't seem to work well with unicode, so chinese characters will not display well.

As noted, putting the URL of Today Online's webpage will certainly not work since it is not recognised as a RSS feed. If you thinking of compressing & optimizing webpages for the small screen, you should be trying Skweezer instead.