SU Communities

Hello everyone,

I just activated the RSS Feed Reader functionality in SU Communities. Once you login, you will see a Reader option in the site menu bar. In the Reader you can register RSS feeds and view them online. It also displays the number of new articles since you've last viewed the feed.

To get started with the Reader, right-click on the My Feeds folder to add new feeds or sub-folders. You can also rename the base folder. Have fun!

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Eric Larsen * Senior Web Developer, Web Services Team Lead / Seattle University * SunGard Higher Education * www.sungardhe.com

One of the cool things about the RSS reader is that not only are you able to manage your subscriptions with n-level folder hierarchies (that you can custom define), but clicking on a folder (not expanding it) will generate an aggregate view of all of the folder's child feeds.

So for example, if you have a folder tree that looks like:

+ {News}
|---- + {International}
|       |--- BBC
|       |--- Guardian
|       |--- International Herald-Tribune
|---- + {National}
        |--- Washington Post
        |--- NYT
        |--- + {Seattle Media}
               |--- Seattle Times
               |--- Seattle PI
               |--- The Stranger

When you click on "News", the feed reader will give you a summary of the latest items for all 8 feeds in one view.  Really handy for getting a quick glance before deciding whether to drill down and go to the sub-folder or single-item level.

It is also really nice that the reader makes note of which items you have "read" and which you have not.

The Ajax and adjustable widths on the 3 columns is really a nice UI touch, too!

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Charles Wesley | Web Developer | SunGard Higher Education / Seattle University | wesleyc (at) seattleu (dot) edu