Let There Be Links

One of the most requested features since the inception of FeedJournal has been hyperlink support in the generated PDF newspaper.

Now it is available!

Users of both the free FeedJournal Reader service and the commercial FeedJournal Publisher can today select the Show web-style links-setting to render links as blue underlined text. This is the default setting. Users who are primarily interested in a traditional paper reading experience can unselect the check box to hide the links. Regardless of this setting, links are always available in the PDF, and the reader sees the URL targets by hovering the linked text with the mouse pointer.

In addition to links inside the article, clicking the headline links to the web page where the full article is published. And in the byline, the feed name links to the web site where the articles are published. Article and feed links are always rendered as normal text, not as HTML links.

In addition to the new links, today’s update also includes better extraction of metadata for Atom feeds.

The new link feature has required large modifications of the code base, and much effort has gone into testing. However, should you run into any feed or articles where you notice abnormalities, please report them to support@feedjournal.com.

doXtop Press Release

A new doXtop press release describes how FeedJournal Publisher let clients generate newspapers that doXtop hosts, distributes and adds social features to.

FeedJournal users can host, embed and collaborate on to their generated newspapers using a plethora of third-party services. DoXtop is a leading and professional provider in this area. 

Recently, I’ve had the pleasure to talk to Paul Caspers, creator of doXtop, about how we can go forward and extend our integration to offer an excellent user experience. When the new Publisher interface will be unveiled later this year, you will all be able to see how all the pieces fit together.

Liberty Newsprint, recently featured on this blog, is a prime example of how content providers are using FeedJournal and doXtop. Please have a look at the press release, embedded below using doXtop.

Individual newspapers deployed on doXtop

Site Update: IE Compatibility (2009-10-06)

Recent user feedback has helped us to weed out a couple of bugs in the FeedJournal Reader service. Most importantly, a recent update to Internet Explorer, caused the Reader service to fail to generate newspapers.

Another issue caused articles without a publishing date to not be included in the newspaper.

Both of these bugs did not affect the commercial Publisher service. The fixes were deployed earlier today, and are now available to all users.

Change log:

• Newspapers could not be generated in Internet Explorer (Thanks, TerPress!)
• Include documents that don't have a valid publishing date (Thanks, Gerald!)
• Minor design change to the subscription list
• Updated to YUI 2.8.0r4