Hi there, as I read every single topic about the rss feeds, I don't want to start anything up, but really need a final answer, if that, what I imagine works, or not. I used to make my apps with Appmakr and did pretty well so far as Appmakr can go ;-) After 5 days of Buzztouch, I feel like I am in heaven, but the rss feed is a very serious problem for me. I would like to have the following (like in Appmakr): - rss feedlinks in my app, from my site with an image of the feed topic on the left - by clicking on the title, image, or description, the complete text opens in the app and doesn't go to the website like it does now. As it is my own website (Joomla 1.5) I could change anything what is needed to the RSS, however I can't really change much. You can see that the feed is working here: feed://www.montesino.at/index.php?format=feed&type=rss&lang=de I tried about everything and understood that I have to tell the XML file what to do, but I have no clue at all... The image doesnt show up and the full text will not show in the app but will open the website. I would gladly pay for this feature, I just need to know if it is possible and how I can be helped. I think this concerns many people and even more important, if the RSS Feeds are easy (plugin?) to handle, all Appmakr people will come here :-) Hope you guys can help, really appreciate it.

Hi LeonG , David offers an idea for you in this thread. :) http://www.buzztouch.com/forum/thread.php?tid=4F55BBB8BC32D4AF2560A0E

Thx for the quick reply. I have 2 problems with that post: 1. My joomla rss feed doenst have the element <image> and don't know why, but it does show up in every browser. 2. He solved it somehow, but I really don't understand what to do here. It should all work automatically, otherwise RSS doesnt make sense, or not?

Hi in Hamburg: You're asking about a few things here and your frustration makes sense. You've got a few problems going on. a) If you don't have an image tag you won't be able to use the 'image tag' in RSS feeds. The whole point about using RSS is that data elements are seperated into their own elements. You're images are in HTML burined the description. This is an entirely different arrangmenet and you can't magically pull images out of random HTML. b) Displaying story contents without going to a website. HTML is always going to open in some sort of browser. In the app or outside the app, it will always be a browser. That doens't mean it has to feel like a browser to the end user but the fact is, iOS can only display HTML in a browser. The best app designers create rss output that is designed specially for the phone, not a website. c) It should work automatically, otherwise RSS doesn't make sense. It does work automatically but you don't have a grasp on how it's working (which is ok). One of the great things about our open source solution is that you can make it do whatever you want if you have the skill and understanding. If you don't, OK, you'll need to find another tool or hire a developer. I wish there were a good answer for you but there isn't with your level of understanding. Take this in baby steps and first see if you can get your RSS output to include an IMAGE node instead of adding image references in the HTML. If you can get that working you'll be much better off.

Hi David, I understand what you write, but how come Appmakr does exactly what I want without having my <image> element. Don't get me wrong, I can live without the image, but i can't live without the story content opening directly in the app (without showing the complete homepage). I can see it is in the app as Safari doesn't open, but the look is just awful... I can imagine some people already build a solution for this in buzztouch and again, I am willing to pay for it. For you it is probably easy peasy and doenst take you long ;-) If I get this implemented in any suitable way, nothing can stop me from getting my own server and taking the yearly fee you talked about in a future topic. I would really need this :(

Hi again... headed out so quick... I don't have any idea why / how AppMakr works. It's likely that they are pulling apart your HTML and extracting images and other goodies from the content. If you open your RSS url in Firefox, then View Source, you'll see exactly where the image data is - in the description element. Another approach could that is common: a) Create a simple .php script to query your Joomla database for stories. Something like SELECT title, description, link FROM store (I have no idea how Joomla organizes data so this is just pseudo code. b) Your simple .php script outputs data in basic RSS format with an item, description, and image tag. Liek the sample output here but with the addition of an image tag; http://www.w3schools.com/rss/default.asp c) You point your RSS screen in your buztouch control panel to the script you create. This works perfect, seen it lots. Note: This would produce a list with icons but would not change the behavior of the link. The link would open in the built in browser. To make this NOT load your entire website you would need to create individual mobilezed pages for each link. Not sure how much energy you want to put into this. For sure I agree with you, loading webpages that are built for a full-size browser into a mobile app generally yields bad results and is in essense no better than using Safari in the first place. I can imagine and imagine all sorts of ways to make the story data display in different ways but all of the ways require custom UIViewControllers and custom logic. We can't do custom programming because we can't keep up with what we do already. We get requests everyday (lots of them) to make custom apps and screens and php scripts and all sorts of things for folks that need help and simply cannot do it. We don't have an office full of programmers waiting for paid work, that's not our focus. But, I'm sure you can hire developers online, maybe in the forum, Freelance sites or other online service providers. Lastly: Plugins: One of the main things we are trying to fix with the newly announced plugin approach is the idea that many of the built in screen types we have now are far too complicated for lots of people. This is a perfect example of that. An RSS plugin that took in data just like you're outputting for sure could be and should be made so you dind't have to do any of the programming. There are dozens of simple examples of this that we hope to get to. In the meantime, if you can make use of what we've already done, cool. If not, we understand. Back later...

Well, what do you think, can we find someone to build a plugin for this? I am certainly willing to pay up to 1000 Dollars for a good plugin that fits my needs.

Yeah, found a solution that will help me out for now: https://www.rssinclude.com/ No browser in there :-) Very nice, check it out and eke me informed if a plugin from BT is coming :-)

Great find. We'll keep you posted. I've moved the idea up the list. Like you said, gotta be tons of folks struggling with the same types of problems.

Thanks David, looking forward to a RSS plugin :-) Would be a nice christmas present ;-)

LeonG, were you able to get RSS Include to work, if so how? Fred