Show HN: A fast RSS reader I built with a friend (opens in new tab)

Perhaps start everyone off with a guest/sample account? I use Node w/ Express for my servers and in the ones that use logins I usually do something like this:

  app.use((req, res, next) => {
    req.user = req.user ||
               usersBySession[req.cookies.session] ||
               {
      logged_in: false,
      username: 'Guest'
    }
  }
  
  app.get('/api/getfeeds', (req, res) => {
    if (!req.user || !req.user.logged_in) {
      res.status(403).send(false);
      return;
    }
  }

I haven't tested it, but it really reminds me of Miniflux. Would you mind comparing your product to Miniflux? Also, what is the business model?

Too much effort to sign up and authenticate for a quick peek. Could you set up a “guest” account with one-click login for exploration? Not to put down your effort, but this will really help the audience (and I say this as someone very interested in RSS aggregators/readers)

i really love this. i wish the entire internet was like it.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. RSS is flawed in many ways (really difficult to work with sometimes hand-written XML), but I love how decentralized it is.

Awesome with your work! Keep fighting the good fight :)

Thanks, your tip for restoring access to Reuters worked for me. I'm very appreciative.

I wish there was some way to convince Reuters to restore it.

I'd even be willing to pay a couple bucks to avoid keeping google informed of my news habits and still have access to one of the few relatively unbiased news sources left.

Nice API! Out of curiosity, how much traction did you gain with it?

Better yet, add a "guest mode", like https://flowreader.com/ to make having an account optional. (If necessary, limit the number of guests per IP address/range, and the number of feeds per guest).

Yeah, this seems to be the biggest complaint in all of this thread. We will do something to make it easier to get an impression of the reader for sure. I don't like screenshots, because, at least for me, the value is in the speed of navigating and the lack of surprises that a single page app will often give you (back button not working properly is the classic).

IDK about OP, but there are a ton of benefits to server side rendering:

1. Extremely good for cli power users and people who use console-based browsers occasionally (guilty of being both).

2. Less likely to stumble upon a really weird behavior in some browser, even the common ones.

3. Faster for anyone who doesn't have a server-grade workstation.

4. Server-side caching - play it smart and you can cache large chunks of the rendered pages, making it an extremely cheap operation to serve.

5. No 80mb javascript files you get on every "modern" website.

6. Easier to maintain.

Just a few off the top of my head.

Yeah sure. Here's a quick brain dump

* Faster page loads is the number one reason. It is super fast to navigate, once you get the shortcuts down. (For now it might actually be a bit slower if you're not in EU)

* Simpler architecture

* You get a lot for free by the browser (loading state, back button actually works, etc)

* Accessible

* Works on every browser (even your mother's potato phone :P)

* Works without JS

Yeah, Miniflux is definitely coming from the same mentality as we are. Also, it's great. :)

Images are tricky. In the first few iterations, everything was left aligned and so images could just flow out and take all the space they needed. That was perfect for images, but less perfect for the reading experience. I'm torn. Sometimes I really dislike when other places cram big beautiful images down to their reading width; yet most of the time I'll agree with you--they should just flow with the text width.

I'll keep a mental note that someone actually took the time to suggest one thing over the other. Maybe it's the right solution. Maybe `max-width: 100%` with a click handler on the image that removes that, so you can toggle it up big if you want/need.

I'm not sure what exactly your flow was here. Did you come from a specific feed? In that case the back button (ALT+Left) should work(?)

We will probably make the title of the feed within the post a link to the feed though. We can't have people getting lost like that. :)

I love RSS. I started using it again late last year and it's a joy once you find the RSS app that fits your needs. Currently very happy with Miniflux, but also gave TT-RSS a try and found that both would work great for me but preferred the resource usage of Miniflux.

Really? We're both Android users ourselves, and use a mix of Chrome and FF.

Did you perhaps not really add the feed? Like, it shows you a preview where you only see the titles first, and then you have to click "Add feed" at the top. It's just a step for you to be sure that you got what you want; but I guess it isn't 100% clear.

Cheers from Copenhagen :-)

We love Atom feeds equally.

Thanks for letting us know :) I think we found it in the logs, so we'll look into the error right away.

We might do that in the end. Nothing is really decided yet. So far we just built it for us, and we love it (both of us use it a lot every single day), so we thought we'd share.