Hi,
since there were quite a few requests for RSS reader scripts, I thought: why not try one, myself.
But instead of having one dedicated page to display the RSS feeds, I thought it'd be pretty cool, if you could overlay the current page you're on with the latest news, sort of like they do on news stations, where the "crawl" on the bottom of the screen shows all relevant informations. This is what it looks like:

RSS news crawler showing celebrity news

RSS news crawler showing breaking news
RSS Newscrawler parses the XML data stream and extracts ITEM,TITLE,DESCRIPTION and pubDate.
RSS Newscrawler contains 2 modules: the first one is the lower third, that can be copied to any page you want to have it displayed to. On the same page you then copy the RSS Center which lets you select one of max. 5 feeds.
I tried to keep the implementation as easy as possible, just follow these steps to implement RSS newscrawler in your XCF:

Load your current XCF and merge rss_overlay.xcf (I'd recommend to save the file under a new name)

Open the page called COPY THIS ITEMS and copy the lower third placeholder to the page you want to display RSS-feeds on (you can have more than one RSS-newscrawler in one Activity but only one on a page)

copy the RSS-CENTER to the same page.

copy the label-text of the yellow panel to the activity script window that holds the RSS pages.

copy the label-text of the green panel to the page script window that holds the lower third and the RSS-Center.

copy the label text of the pink panel to any button that should trigger the RSS-Newscrawler. A short press fires up the default or last loaded feed, keeping the button pressed will bring up the RSS-CENTER.

Now go to the SETTINGS page and enter your favourite RSS feeds into the labels.

Select a corresponding template by entering the number you will find on the TEMPLATES pages. So far there are only six templates, but I am sure there are more to come. Just tell me, what topic you want to have covered, I'll see what I can do.
Don't understand a single word of what I am saying?
OK, here is a 5:30 min videotutorial showing how to implement RSS Newscrawler
IMPLEMENTING RSS NEWSCRAWLER(~15MB)
Like always (when I am publishing scripts) this is only a beta version. Some issues have to be resolved. Here are the ones I know of:

1. CDATA is not yet processed and is ignored. Yahoo weather information uses this.
   
2. Redirections (Header response codes 301 / 302) are not taken into consideration - yet.
   
3. I did some crude text processing, but not all special characters are included. This is actually not a hard thing to do, but I just haven't got round to check for all ampersand#; codes that lure in the web.
   
4. There is no timeout implemented, nor any error messages... I will try to make these, but till then, just make sure the feeds you entered exist ;-)
   
5. Not really a bug: The RSS feed gets completely loaded everytime you enter "your" RSS button - there is no cache function or so.

I hope you guys have fun with it and can use it.
As always, feedback is gladly appreciated: Please let me know when the script is not running properly or when RSS feeds are not displayed correctly. Tell me, what features you would like to see or what other lower third templates you are missing.
DOWNLOAD RSS NEWSCRAWLER
Non-commercial use only. Use at own risk.
Regards
André

----------------------------------------------------------------
Update: 4 new templates
Just replace the TEMPLATES2 page with the one you will find in the update file.

Download:TEMPLATES2.XCF


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Update:

Completely overhauled the main code: more reliable, better ;-) faster!

CDATA poses no problem any more

Special character lookup table for feeds that are not encoded properly (e.g. yahoo france)

cursor control implemented: freely define, which keys to use for selecting feeds.

Optional rotary wheel control implemented.

RSS indicator - see at a glance on which page RSS-Newscrawler is active.

added 14 templates - more to come, just let me know.
DOWNLOAD RSS NEWSCRAWLER 2

André

Last edited by André du Fresne on August 15, 2008 15:04.

Great work. I haven't tried it yet but I'm happy to see you sharing your hard work.

I was able to install your xcf file into my existing one. I have zero experience in programming this remote. Mine was done by O1R. I followed your video very slowly and I can tell you that it works great and is very cool!! I have to thank you for helping me "pimp" my remote. My only request is an NFL RSS feed. That would make my remote complete. Thanks again!!!

VegasNate,
glad it works.
As for the NFL feed... have you checked out the Yahoo RSS feeds?
Here's one I found:
[Link: sports.yahoo.com]
Just paste this adress into the URL Link field in the SETTINGS page of the RSS Newscrawler script. (yes.... a football themplate will follow soon).

btw... this thread has about 180 hits, but only 2 replies...
Don't get me wrong, but it makes me think that either there is no interest or it is not presented well or - even worse - the script itself is bad or too complicated.
Is there anything I could improve?
Starting to doubt myself :-(
Best
André

Andre, as a paid independant AMX programmer I appreciate the fact that there are people on here that are putting up some really cool applications. I have yet to do any serious programming with the Pronto yet but am interested in creating an app for the Pronto to be used with an AMX controller and I understand how complicated this stuff can be. I just hope that the people that are downloading and using this stuff appreciate the fact that you and others here have put in many hours of work with some of these modules and that you are giving away something that is commercially worth alot of money.

WOW! I haven't tried it yet but when I get some free time. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us. It is much appreciated.

It looks great.

I'll try to modify it for TSU9400

Thanks

Hmmm.... could be more complicated than it sounds at first... The screen resolution of the TSU9400 is 240x320, right?
So apart of resizing the graphics (which I could try to do), you would also have to change the position-formula of the crawl. Since I use an average for every single letter and you probably have to use a lower screenfont as well, this averaged letter size must be taken into consideration as well....
Let me know how you're doing, OK?
Regards
André

I had a few looks here, but didn't have the time to try the script.
The screenshots look great !

I agree, it looks very classy! Unfortunately, I've also not had time to try it yet...

I tried it....I LIKED IT :)

nice job Andre

I resized the graphics and it works great with 9400 still have to resize a few more things, i had to slow the scroll rate to 2 so you can read it.

Andre, as always, your graphics truly amaze me. NICE JOB!

Everyone here please also realize there's a non-commercial license attached. See the note just below the download link in Andre's opening post.

Yes, I was able to change the feeds to what I was looking for. Thanks again!! Works great

Hello,

I've installed it on my pronto and it works great, I've also been able to change some RSS feeds, very impressive job, great graphics and very user friendly.
There's one thing I've noticed, some caracters are displayed on a strange way. I explain, in french, we have "é", "è", "à", ... You don't use such caracters in the US, or in Germany, and instead of having the right caracter displayed, I have something like "*%¨^" on the remote.
Maybe it's due to the feed, or something to change in prontoscript, I don't know.

Once again, impressive job.