I have been looking at Thunderbird plugins today and I am not feeling excited. Unlike Firefox, Thunderbird does not have a lot of plugins. The ones which are there, did not seem good enough. I was particularly looking like an RSS aggregator. Now ThunderBird does a nice job of managing RSS subscriptions and showing the stories. What I wanted, was to import an OPML file from my current RSS Aggregator and let ThunderBird manage the feeds. This way I can eliminate one running application and save on some resources.
I tried Forumzilla, but it did not work. I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work. It did not even import my OPML file.
I read about newsblog.jar on Dougal Campbell’s blog. Many people wrote about it, including Wayne Graham and Gumuz.
Dougal has basically added some functions to a JavaScript file in the newsblog.jar file that provide OPML import / export. I thought of giving it a try.
So I replaced the file in my chrome folder, and launched Thunderbird. Sure enough, there were “Import OPML” and “Export OPML” buttons on Subscription Management. So I tried to import the OPML I had. Didn’t work! I then exported my current subscription to see how that OPML looked like. I changed my OPML file to have the same structure as the exported one, but that too did not succeed. I tried a lot of combination but all failed.
After a few restarts, I thought of figuring out this myself. So opened up the jar file (it’s actually a zip file) and checked up subscription.js. It seemed normal! Then I thought about looking at any messages that may be coming up in the process. Opened up the JavaScript Console from Tools, and saw a few messages that said something similar to “body[0] is undefined”. I cleared up the JavaScript console and thought of trying this again to see what really goes on.
I also made sure that the outline tag comes on a new line after the body tag.
Went to import, and chose the file. And it worked!
Now, don’t ask me why did it work! I don’t know myself! I think it was just testing my patience!
Here are a few things that I learnt on the way:
- Forumzilla needs a folder to store the feed in. The default settings won’t work. But if you create a folder within “News & Blogs” and assign that, it will be able to download the feed properly.
- Thunderbird too has JavaScript Console, and it can be great to debug things.
- If you are facing problems with OPML import, export your feeds and compare the resulting XML with your OPML. This may give you a good insight.
- Try and work with a single feed first. If you can import that successfully, go with the rest.
- Sometimes your luck plays stronger!