So this is the next project that I shall attempt to tackle and of course won't finish. My first part is to create an rss reader, once I have the reader it will read podcast feeds. The program will check when the podcast was last updated and will offer an option to download the updated version. If the user decides to download the updated version then they will be presented with a dialog box to choose where to save their podcasts.

With that being said, can someone please post links to just rss feeds so that I can get that part tested and out of the way.

Well, there's the two in the sidebar here, http://www.cemetech.net/scripts/cemetechnews.php and http://www.cemetech.net/forum/rss.php

Due to me having a cold, there has been very little progress. So far the only progress that has been made is the menubar. To view the menubar in all its glory, you can download the file here http://www.lafferjm.com/projects/rssreader/RssReader.zip. Note the large file size is due to the fact that it is an executable jar, all you should have to do is double click it. If I were to package just the class and image the download would be less than 10KB.

For testing podcast download look at twit.tv, they have a lot of different podcast feeds available that you could test with, also revision3 would have a bunch of video ones you could try.

Alright thanks. And on a side note, I lost all progress on this(which wasn't much) due to a system failure. And on a completely off topic tangent, in the system failure I also lost, both of my final projects, and a final exam. Luckily I had turned in one project, and backed up the other, still had to redo the final exam though.

I have a question about the user interface. Should I show multiple feeds using tabs, or just have one area that is updated for the opened feed. The former would be the harder of the two, but I believe it would be a good learning experience for me.

As I said on SAX/IRC, I think the former would be better for a relatively small number of feeds, say eight or fewer, while the latter would be better for a larger number of feeds. How do you expect people to be using this application?

I have no clue how they are going to use it seeing as there are very little responses in the topic

Let's see, if I was using it I would have ticalc.org, cemetech posts, engadget, and a handful of others, so for me, the tabs would be the best. Actually, I think the main tab should be an aggregate of all the feeds, sorted by date and time, perhaps with each feed a different color? To be honest, the ideal would be if the user could pick whether you wanted a tabbed or paned layout based on his or her needs.

The choice between panel and tabs would be doable but not for me just yet. I think ill go with a single panel then switch to tabs for now just to keep it easy. Also adding a new feed works now, now i just have to add the ability to delete and edit them. Once those are done the only thing really left is to add the actual rss reading and parsing.

Probably because there are a bajillion programs that already do what you want, do it better than you will, and are on just about every device imaginable.

So since nobody will use it, it doesn't really matter how the UI looks - just make something you're happy with.