There’s a cool little app called Konfabulator for Mac OS X that allows you to display, build, and modify little “widgets” for your desktop, like the weather, a clock, or the OSNews top stories, updated continuously! Screenshot here. Thanks to Adam Pearson for the source sample. Additionally, we added support for a truckload of mobile devices and we would need your help testing them.Please note that when we say “support” we mean that the vertical sidebar on the left and all the ads, won’t show. You get a clean, much faster to render simplified interface with no ads and no nested tables. It should render well on browsers that support automatic reformating/resizing to fit in the small resolutions that these devices carry.
(Tip: KDE Konqueror 3.1 users can check out this interface by setting their user-agent to “Lynx” or “w3m” from Konqueror’s menu, or set OmniWeb to “w3m”.)
So, in addition to Mozilla’s sidebar, AvantGO, OpenWave, WAP (wap.osnews.com), Opera’s sidebar, T-Mobile/Danger’s SideKick/HipTop, text-based browsers (Lynx, Links, w3m) etc etc, we now added direct support (no need to load the “home.php” anymore) for these devices:
Mobile phones that carry HTML-capable browsers from AU, Access NetFront, J-PHONE, DoCoMo and OpenWave’s UP browser version 6 and above. Especially if you are in Japan and you have access to some of these phones, please let us know how we render.
Support for Symbian Opera and other browsers that use the EPOC user agent string (some high-end phones should do, please let me know if this actually works ok without ads).
Support for PocketIE and Windows CE devices, including popular PDAs based on PocketPC.
Better support for Opera under Zaurus and for the main Zaurus browser.
Support for Nokia Communicator GeOS’ based devices.
Support for WebTV, SONYBrowser Playstation 2 and Dreamcast.
Support for all… obscure devices that send a HTTP string for resolutions 640×480 and below.
If your device does load osnews as it is indented (no vertical bar, no ads) but it doesn’t render correctly making reading impossible for some reason, please let us know about it by emailing us. Thanks!
Update (July 18 2003) Added support (no ads showing, much faster rendering) for OmniWeb on NeXT machines, any PalmOS browsers including PalmSource’s and Blazer, Oregano for Risc OS, IBrowse, Voyager and AWeb for Amiga, Voyager for Risc OS and Voyager for QNX.
This looks a lot like Stardock’s DesktopX for Windows.
http://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/
Eugenia, where could one get that desktop background? Is it included in OSX? Please post a link or something – I want it for my WinXP background – it’s very clean, simple, and pretty
Hey not fair..You mentioned AvantGO, but I see no mention of plucker(plkr.org) support.
Matt, that’s one of the OS X backgrounds that comes with the system
At least I can view the headlines on my blackberry, but why not let us (wap browser) people see the content too? I don’t really know how wap works, but I’m assuming it is possible because I read other news sites using wap…
This OS News upgrade – wow! I’ll have to go get some devices! 🙂
cool lil konfab source for osnews!
I like these apps like konfab that are showing up for OS X.
…really cool OSNews widget! However, would it be possible to add a prefs setting to make the window expand either upwards (ie. above the “title” bar) or downwards? That way you could place it anywhere you want – I prefer things at the bottom of the screen myself…
…just make the entire window expand upwards, ie. moving the “titlebar” upwards to fit the news item bars below…?
I’m afraid that would be beyond my capabilities, but you’re welcome to download and edit the widget yourself. Konfabulator widgets are Javascript, so knock yourself out!
not trackload… 😉
Cool software, btw…
> At least I can view the headlines on my blackberry, but why not let us (wap browser) people see the content too?
WAP is only suitable for very short messages. Headlines is already s for WAP, and we even can’t render on some older WAP phones, because they don’t follow the spec. WAP is a worse mess than HTML browser support is. It is a nightmare, so please be happy with pure headlines… If your BlackBerry already can read our wap files, I am more than happy with that capability.
BTW, I added all this support for these devices just this morning, but I don’t have emulators for all to test with. If you have a PocketPC PDA or a Zaurus PDA or any other of the devices listed in the article, please test it and let me know if you can see the ads or not. If you CAN’T see the vertical bar and the ads, then we are ok! Thanks!
I love this thing, needs some more widgets, or different versions of ones, or more advanced ones at least.
Thanks eugenia, awesome app.
good way to get more readers
.
Tell me…I have konfabulator installed and downloaded the OSNews-fabulation, but it doesn’t want to show me the top ten stories? Just shows the main OSNews Bar and that’s it…
can you please send a screenshot? Have you clicked on the (-) sign there? Have you installed the latest Konfabulator and then selected the osnews widget via its menu? thanks.
I’ve clicked the (-) btn and i’ve clicked the plus and I clicked my desktop a couple of times for good measure but no joy.
Haven’t tried Konfabulator (with 17 applications open, and many windows, seeing my desktop is a rare thing), but I’m quite enjoying NetNewsWire (the OSNews Moz Sidebar is going unused now). I’m wondering if OSNews could send out the first paragraph of articles as well as the headlines?
Naaah.. most of our articles are just a paragraph anyway… If we do that, you won’t have to come over here, and then we can’t pay hosting. 😉
I’ve been browsing OSNews on PocketIE w/ AvantGo for some time now. Works well on the first page, but browsing any deeper and I still get the ads and sidebars which make browsing a pain. Is there a ‘lite’ version of OSNews somewhere with limited images and formatted for the screen of a PocketPC?
Whoops, wrong topic (how’d I do that?). My appologies.
If your BlackBerry already can read our wap files, I am more than happy with that capability.
Maybe you could view the OSNews pages from mobiledoc http://www.xerox.com/mdoc
.. Maybe …
Which multiple desktop program are you using in that pic?
That’s CodeTek’s Virtual Desktop (Google for it). It’s a great little app; download it today!
Androo, please tell me which page exactly shows the ads with your PDA. It should have work perfectly with all our pages, not just the front page. Please let me know which page that is that shows the ads (comments, story ?)