rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

ThinRSS

What is it?
ThinRSS is a Java Web Start enabled RSS browser (see screenshot below).

It was built using Thinlet in about an hour (max!) and is available by Java Web Start (although it will run from the command line too) as a JAR file.

The total JAR (including Thinlet) is 30k.

Where can I  run it?
If you have WebStart, just start it up!

(Also, if you think my ThinRSS is cool - checkout the Thinlet AmazonBrowser - it will knock your socks off for a 50k app, guaranteed!)

Can I get the code?
The application is just a single Java class and an XML description of the interface. See ThinRss.java and thinrss.xml for the source.

Got a screenshot?
Sure - here's a screenshot of ThinRSS viewing my blog (rebelutionary).

How did it come about?
It's amazing how confluences happen at certain times.

Yesterday I was chatting to Rickard about how there are no nice RSS viewers, and we decided an RSS viewer should be written that works via Java Web Start. Web Start is something I've always wanted to mess around with but never had an application for.

Today, via Bob, I ran across Thinlet - a very lightweight GUI layer for creating applets and Java GUI clients.

I had an hour free, so I combined them and would you believe it, ThinRSS appeared!