
Ask HN: Building a Chrome extension for a sidebar web feed? - robodev
I&#x27;m building a Chrome extension to display web feeds (RSS&#x2F;Atom &amp; more) in a convenient always accessible sidebar in Chrome.<p>I want to know if this is anybody else here will find useful?<p>The sidebar can be accessed in any tab, so you can quickly get a glimpse of your favourite headlines and feeds on any web page and close it when done. What makes this app different is it&#x27;s simplicity compared to the other solutions out there. I am building it for people like myself who want to keep up to date with various news and web feeds within a simple interface and without paying a fortune just to get up to date feeds.<p>Some benefits:<p>- Easily accessible sidebar available in any tab.
- Get notified of the latest headlines and news items automatically.
- Follow your favorite blogs, news sites, YouTube channels, RSS feeds and more.
- Configurable feed refresh times
- Synced across all browsers the user is signed in to.<p>Is this something that you would like to have? If so then hit me up! I would like to know how this app can benefit you and what features you would like to see. I&#x27;ll start working on a landing page soon and post here once it&#x27;s done.
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ktpsns
Actually, if I would have a need to follow RSS feeds (are there any left?), I
would greatly prefer a fast, well written native programme. With a proper
toolkit (Qt/GTK/Cocoa/MFC or whatever is modern and native). My feeling is
that the time for browser extensions which add other application logic is
over.

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robodev
Thanks for replying. Why do you feel the time for extensions is over, when
many companies are creating extensions for their apps?

I believe that the browser is the workspace, apart from things like IDE and
Slack. A lot of time is spent there. Extensions don't get in your way, and
with modern processors and JavaScript engines you can't really tell the
difference. I come from a Java background so it was difficult for me at first
to accept JavaScript, though I code in TypeScript for sanity.

I can see the point of having native apps though. These days it's a matter of
user experience, not so much performance as computers are generally pretty
good. None of those toolkits are really modern anymore! QT? :) I think perhaps
React or Electron is the way forward.

So what kind of feeds would you be interested in? News, updates, stocks,
blogs?

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ktpsns
You say it: It's all about the user experience. And neither Electron nor a
chrome extension can provide a seamless look and feel. Interestingly, Firefox
extensions with XUL used to be able to feel "native". For instance, there was
FireFTP, an XUL application within Firefox (basically acting as an application
within the original Mozilla "meta" application). That felt native.

Have you ever touched Qt? It provides a way more native feeling then wxWidgets
did. You see, I probably come from another time, you maybe never heard of XUL,
but it was a great technology at that time. Maybe similar as how Swing changed
Java GUIs in the early 2000s (but inverse, by going from native to custom
widgets).

Really, I would say even more today, it's all about the quality of the
widgets, the smoothness of the UI and the interplay with the native ecosystem.
You won't get anywhere with browser extensions in this respect.

