OPod v0.1

Two buzzwords for the price of one! (free in fact)

The OPML-Pod is an AJAX OPML and RSS viewer widget that you can embed in any web page you like. The interface is inspired by the Apple's hierarchy browsers like the Mac Finder and iPod. Check out the example to the right. It's showing James Corbett's node in the Open Irish Directory. If you browse around a bit you should be able to see it dynamically including OPML and RSS. If you have your own OPML outline then you can preview what it would look like in the OPod using the form below.

How to put an OPod on your site

Currently you must host the backend of your OPod yourself. That means you have to be able to upload PHP files to your server.

1. Get the source zipfile
2. extract it on your server
3. Insert the following HTML snippet wherever you want to have an OPod

   <script type="text/javascript" 
            src="http://yourserver/path/to/OPod.php?opmlfile=http://URL-of-OPML-file">
   </script>

This setup is necessary until someone builds a JSON OPML and RSS caching API or donates me a nice server to do it myself.

Warnings

This is early version software. If you're not prepared to hack at it you might be better off steering clear until it's been tested a bit more.

• I've done my best to ensure the safeness of this software but putting someone elses code on your server without knowing what it does is not very smart. That said, if you check back here every so often I'll update it with any patches it needs.
• I've tested it in Firefox 1.5 and IE 6 on Windows XP. Let me know if it doesn't work on your platform. Or better still, tell me how to make it work on your platform.
• You will probably have problems with versions of PHP < 5. If you'd like to generalize it a bit for earlier versions that would be great.

Possible Extensions

• Have it do its own feed parsing, not rely on Google Reader.
• Support other outline formats? XOXO?

Credits

• OPod was written by me, Rowan Nairn
• Thanks to James Corbett for inspiration and discussion
• The backend of OPod started off as Dan MacTough's OPML browser
• The RSS fetch uses the Google Reader API to normalize to Atom
• OPod uses a stripped down version of the prototype.js library and some effects from script.aculo.us
• OPod also uses some famfamfam mini icons
• Oh yeah, and

Feedback

Please send bug reports, comments and cash donations to eurekaman at gmail

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