December 14th, 2006
Newsgator updates knowledgebase on OPML export problem, hints at new feature too
If you caught my blog and video yesterday, then you'd know I was having some difficulties getting Newsgator's OPML export process to work. Today, from Newsgator Technologies Inc. product support manager Ronnie Gilbertson comes an update on that OPML problem. Via e-mail Gilbertson wrote:
This is a follow up to the OPML import in Google Reader. I noticed in your video that you were using FireFox and when using the save as dialog you had "All Files" as the Save as type. From what I have found so far in testing, for some reason, FireFox will perform a save as [that] Google reader can not import.
However, when the file type is "Webpage/ complete" Google can import it. Also, this does not seem to be a problem in Internet Explorer.I will update our KB article to set the file type to "Webpage/complete"when performing a save as when using FireFox to ensure that there are no further hang-ups for other users importing in Google reader.
We also have a feature to improve OPML exporting experience, which should get some focus shortly.
I'm not exactly sure what can be done to smooth out the somewhat laborious importing/exporting process for OPML. One thing that would be cool would be for the service doing the importing to not have to find a file on someone's hard drive, but rather, just a URL on the Web. However, maybe there are some security implications there that must be considered first. As non-user friendly as the process is, I guess I'm just glad OPML exists to handle this. Without it, every service would have to build it's own converters for all the other services.
The update to the Newsgator's knowledgebase entry can be found here.
