Enhanced RSS Feed for MSDN Wiki

Published 26 June 06 12:24 AM | msdnwiki 

Justin-Josef Angel has created an RSS feed that contains the complete text of MSDN Wiki community content blocks, rather than just the first 100 characters (as are available in the RSS feeds you can access from the MSDN Wiki home page).  Read about the feed in Justin's post, and then subscribe at http://www.justinangel.net/msdnwiki/MSDNWiki.aspx.

This is pretty nifty--the feed includes the full text of the MSDN content and the community content, and it can take a query string parameter that lets you filter by phrase.

-- MollyBos

Comments

# sarathc said on June 25, 2006 11:33 PM:
I could not subscribe or load to the following URL http://www.justinangel.net/msdnwiki/MSDNWiki.aspx

The error message was like this
"XML Parsing Error: no element found
Location: http://www.justinangel.net/msdnwiki/MSDNWiki.aspx
Line Number 1, Column 1:
^"
# Justin Angel said on June 26, 2006 4:15 PM:
Hey sarathc, This is a valid RSS Feed.

What RSS reader are you using?
The feed might need some adepting for your reader (although I checked and it works great on all the major RSS Readers).
# Richard said on June 27, 2006 3:34 AM:
I get an empty document... trying directly in Firefox and IE. As well as in my prefered reader: SharpReader (latest version from www.sharpreader.net).
# TAG said on June 27, 2006 6:48 AM:
Stupid feature. It's based on assumption that there will be low traffic or user can master out query string for interesting topics.

Instead of reinventing wheel - I wish Microsoft simply licensed software/technology from succesfull projects like http://www.mediawiki.org/ (one used for WikiPedia). This will be good for both sides - MS and general public. One of benefits will be wider use of MSDNWiki as there are a lot of existing Wikipedian.

It's a shame for Microsoft that nobody except two Microsoft insiders actualy use MSDNWiki.

The way you designed current Wiki system make it realy unusable. If Microsoft unable to develop web-sites - then give up and please develop desktop application for same functionality instead. You already have read-only MSDN documentation manager dexplore.exe - why not add "Edit This Page" function to it ?
# Justin Angel said on June 30, 2006 10:21 AM:
Hey sarathc & Richard,

There was a problem with the encoding of the RSS document which is now solved. Please contact me @ J@JustinAngel.Net if the problems presist. I'd really like to help you use the RSS# feature.

Tag, MSDNWiki RSS# assumes that DEVELOPERS would be able to copy&paste names of classes / namespaces / topics / ... they are interested to into the address bar. If you feel a simple web app is in order, please contact me with what you'd like to see in it.
BTW, It's never a good idea to call someone's work a "stupid feature".
# TAG said on July 1, 2006 10:09 AM:
Justin,
<i>MSDNWiki RSS# assumes that ... </i>

Wrong assumption. Go to WikiPedia and see how easy it's to add/remove article or talk page into your Watch list. There is no needs to master out query strings and download entire RSS feed on every refresh (your webpage can support If-Modified-Since and ETag requests at least).

I would like Microsoft do everything right at their servers - not linking to toy projects like yours.
# msdnwiki said on July 5, 2006 3:00 PM:
>> The way you designed current Wiki system make it realy unusable.

TAG, can you provide more details about why you think the current system is unusable?  


>> I would like Microsoft do everything right at their servers - not linking to toy projects like yours.

We're planning to add more RSS support in future versions of our site.  I think projects like Justin's are great, though, because they provide functionality that customers want (just because you don't want this type of RSS feed doesn't mean nobody does, TAG :) in a very timely manner.  I'm hoping that we'll see more interesting re-uses of MSDN content in the coming months, particularly now that the Microsoft content is easily available via the MSDN Web services (see http://pluralsight.com/blogs/craig/archive/2006/06/12/27273.aspx).
# TAG said on July 6, 2006 9:46 AM:
Would like to know how to make MSDNWiki usable?
Do at least following:

a) Link to others articles easily
b) Support syntax coloring/language filtering of code snippets
c) Attach short single-line comments to edits
d) Show list of changes - not all versions of page
e) Allow seeing difference between changes (then you currently see two versions you have no idea that was actually changed)
f) Infinite timeout for logins on msdn webpage. No needs to login every day.
g) Make category tree on left side optional (it was good for desktop software - but for web it takes infinite time to load it)
h) Remove large and mostly useless ASP VIEWSTATE from all articles. There is no need to duplicate article text in every server response and send back to server in every HTTP client request.

I see nothing of this in specs at Connect website. Also I don't see how community content will integrate with offline MSDN Library viewer (this mean that users have to use online library only to see community content - i.e. most of user will never see it).

P.S> Current "MSDN Wiki" system is not wiki at all. Renaming 3 years old MSDN Annotations ( http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/annotations/annotations.aspx ) to Wiki is simply misleading.
You must allow community to overlay existing Microsoft content with community one. If you are worried about spam/vandalism - make all edits post-moderated (i.e. approve required to show up on main content) and make it possible to see content from Microsoft, approved and non-approved community with single click.

Feel free to write a blog posting or comment if you need more details.
# Pravin Patil said on July 31, 2006 12:59 AM:
Hey, it's not working.
I am getting the same error as mentioned by sarathc.

Rss Reader - RSS Bandit
Error - XML document must have a top level element. Error processing resource...


try to validate this feed. It fails.
<http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=http://www.justinangel.net/msdnwiki/MSDNWiki.aspx>

Cheers!
# krinkiespeijer said on August 11, 2006 4:27 PM:
....after 5 min downloading still not any ok/nok message on my mda variO pocketpc...
Sorry, it's to big for pocketpc.
# krinkiespeijer said on August 11, 2006 4:28 PM:
....after 5 min downloading still not any ok/nok message on my mda variO pocketpc...
Sorry, it's to big for pocketpc.
# Joseph J Mele said on September 12, 2006 10:57 AM:

I am trying to get the rss feed in gmail web clips. I am having no success.

fyi
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