Library clips

I’ve been following the Grazr team since the start and they have finally reached a milestone, Grazr has become a deluxe OPML editor.

Since my last post Grazr is nearly a standard OPML editor, you could only edit existing Reading Lists, but now it’s the one stop shop for all your OPML needs.

Create as many OPML’s as you like, and they don’t have to be a Reading List (even though the link does say create a Reading List, in my mind a Reading List is a bunch of feeds wrapped in OPML)

Their fabulous editor allows you to create an OPML from scratch, for a given node, select from the menu:

- folder
- text
- data (RSS, webpage, OPML)
- discover (this brings up a side panel and allows you to drag any node from your other Grazr’s into the OPML you are creating)

Yep that’s right, it’s drag and drop and the performance is spectacular:

- highlight some text on a webpage and click and drag it into your OPML editor
- click on an RSS or OPML icon on the web and drag it in
- click on the icon in your browser address bar and drag it over
- double click on any node to alter the name
- drag nodes to change list order or drag on top of another node to nest it in a folder

You can even create a logo for your OPML’s by searching Flickr from within Grazr.

If you are not interested in creating your own OPML, and you just want to make a widget from an already existing feed or OPML, just skip straight to “create a widget”.

Interesting

I created a new Reading List by dragging in an OPML URL, then I saved.
Grazr did not clone this OPML and host me my own OPML URL, instead it just bookmarked this OPML.

I re-edited this Reading List by dragging a feed into it, then I saved.
Now Grazr is hosting me my own OPML URL.

If then I go back and delete this feed from the Reading List, Grazr no longer hosts the OPML and it’s back to the original OPML URL (like a bookmark).

In another experiment I created a Reading List by adding just one feed, Grazr is not hosting anything here, it’s just bookmarking this feed for me.

Then I added a text node (or another feed, whatever) and saved, now Grazr is hosting me my own OPML URL.

I really like how all this works itself out in the background.

So it seems if you only have one item in the Grazr it will bookmark it, and not clone and host it.

Feedback

If I drag an OPML icon into the editor I can’t see the contents within that OPML (as it’s an editor and not a viewer), but I’d like to be able to drag the OPML icon into a sidebar sandbox viewer, check out the nodes I like and drag them in, as I may not be interested in the whole OPML

…the site I got it from may just have an OPML icon, so I don’t know what’s in it yet, I can’t view it…I suppose I could use a Grazr bookmarklet to view it (this kind of becomes my sandbox viewer, then I can drag in whatever node I like into my new Grazr).

Don’t forget you have a master OPML that holds all your OPML’s.

Another management idea would be to organise my Grazr’s with tags, if this is to be my new standard OPML editor, I plan to make a few…it’s all personal for me, but I guess a public tag cloud could be made where we have a social OPML folksonomy.

Or what about a tree metaphor for all your Grazr’s, be able to edit your outline of all your outlines…whatever happened to Treedia (according to Kosso it seems it’s only going to be OPML’s with enclosures…they are working with Motorola and others).

[via Ouseful]

Marjolein from CleverClogs has taken Grazr to the absolute max with her new endeavour, Podcasting Professionals.

I’ve posted on some of her past Grazr hacks; RSS Tool Vendors : newmastering, grazing, the works!, and
Grazr newsmaster mashup

From the days of a list of feeds, to wrapping them in an OPML Reading List, Marjolein has taken what you can do with a topic list of feeds and mashed it up with the hottest RSS tools to date.

What we have is a Grazr reader to read the latest items from an OPML Reading List, but there are the other things you can do with this Grazr:

1. Click on the OPML icon to get a list of feeds, click on a feed to read contents

2. Click on Recent Headlines to get a river of news (a spliced feed from all the feeds in the OPML)

3. Fetch posts from the content in the Grazr related to any page you are visiting on the web and display these as summaries on your screen (via BlogRovr)

4. Search filter (via MySyndicaat)

5. Get notifications for this search filter by email, IM, SMS, skype (via ZapTXT)

6. Get notifications for this search filter as a desktop alert (via particls)

7. Search through the posts from the Grazr with a browser search box (via search plugins)