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I use RSS for webcomics as well as visiting the actual websites, but a few things: 1. You miss out on the aesthetics each comic's website brings to the table
by kakarot 8y ago
I use RSS for webcomics as well as visiting the actual websites, but a few things:
1. You miss out on the aesthetics each comic's website brings to the table
2. Sometimes you miss things like "hidden panels" or blog posts you're interested in.
3. No advertisement money going towards the artists (Not a big deal if you support them by buying merch and the comics don't need a lot of bandwidth)
I would really love to develop a reader that focused on webcomics, having both a dynamically curated section as well as all of your subscribed comics. Newspaper-like layout. Customized borders around each comic to add back some of the flair each comic's website offers. Quick links to the artist's blog/website/comic permalink. Text/image-only advertisements interleaved between comics, with 100% revenue going back to artists. Even merch advertisements which occasionally appear under an artist's comic, offering links to their storefronts.
Basically an open source Funny Papers for the web, which would offer content discovery for artists through its curated/related sections, as well as revenue from advertisements. It would update daily and could be used to follow both new and old comics serially.
I just need someone to help me build it because I'm juggling too many things to devote all of my attention to it.
- fredsir 8y agoI don't think 1., 2., and 3. is applicable to at least how I use my RSS reader. Also, I don't understand why that is not the norm... The way I use my RSS reader is that I scroll through the list of posts, and if it's something I wish to check back on later, I press the shortcut to send it to instapaper, and if it's something I wish to check now, I press the shortcut to open it in a new tab, and then I go on. When I'm done, all posts have been marked as read, and then I have a few tabs open that I immediately check out, and a few links in instapaper that I check out later. I never actually read an article or a comic or a video in my reader. It's terrible interface, I find. I much rather check out the actual website. I do the exact same for instapaper; open in a new tab and archive the link.
- kakarot 8y agoIt sounds like you are using RSS as a way to generalize your access to each provider, but only as a delivery mechanism. The viewing is still done in the browser. With the exception of web apps / extensions, it's my understanding that RSS feeds were originally meant to be consumed by a program specifically optimized for handling feeds, instead of a bloated, slow, unsafe web browser. In the end, your RSS flow could mostly be replaced by a set of live bookmarks in your bookmark toolbar, then you wouldn't even have to leave the browser. Plus you would get easy multi-platform synchronization of your feeds. A hell of a lot easier than running an RSS reader on a private server like a lot of us.
- fredsir 8y agoWell, that might be the intention, but I have never experienced an "RSS Reader" that have left me with the want to actually consume the content inside it. I much prefer opening say an article in a browser and reading it with "reader mode" if it has bad text-layout. Also, my RSS reader is just a web app, not a native application, so when I get through my list of new posts in my feeds, I'm already in the browser.
- rcxdude 8y agoThis is how I use RSS as well. I wound up writing my own self-hosted RSS reader which is extremely simple and supports this workflow.
- nsriv 8y agoAny chance you've open-sourced this solution? I've been looking for something self-hosted for ages.
- pouta 8y agoI'm up for it