mRSS - mobile RSS Reader


mRSS is a J2ME MIDlet for Java enabled mobile phones. It allows the user to view RSS news feeds, such as those avaliable from Syndic8.com while on the move.

Current release: version 1.91 - 22/05/2010

Why


Back in 2005 I wrote a basic RSS reader because Slashdot's WAP page is pretty much unreadable, and I wanted to keep up with the news.
Once I got the parser working, I added a GUI and a datastore so it could be configured to read other feeds, for my own use.
Then, I saw somebody had written something similar, but targeted at larger mobile phones with decent sized screens, so I thought other people may be interested in reading RSS on small phones. I decided to open source it (under a BSD license), so other people could modify it to suit their needs.

I periodically updated the app as I found and fixed bugs, with the last change to the original code in September 2007

Around this time, mobile phones started to support RSS reading as standard, and as I'd reached the end of what I was interested in doing, development stopped.

Then, at the end of 2009 I got more interested in programming in general and decided to rewrite mRSS, initially just to tidy it up, but also with a view to restructuring it to allow further enhancement.

The result is a tidied up design, built using the NetBeans visual mobile designer, and the output has been enhanced to include images.
There's a few more enhancements I'm thinking of adding to 1.9, including support for basic auth to view password protected feeds.

At some point in the future I intend to start work on version 2 which will interleave all news stories in a combined view.

Go on then, let's see it in action


Here's a few shots of it running


The main menu



The feeds list



The RSS feed




There is a 'hidden' feature of the about screen - if you view it with no feeds configured (e.g. after a fresh install) it will create some sample feeds. This is just for my convenience, but you may find them interesting.

Installation


If you want to install it direct to your phone, view https://sourceforge.net/projects/mrss/files/ in your phone's web browser and download the latest JAR file.
If that fails you may have to manually transfer the JAR to your phone using via cable/bluetooth/memory card.


Because it connects as soon as you select a feed to view, you should only use it with a GPRS/EDGE/3G/WiFi connection. If you connect over WAP you'll be charged for the period of the connection (until you exit the app). With modern data services you are only charged for the bytes transfered (if at all, you lucky people).

Revision History


v1.0 - Initial release 19/04/2005
v1.0.1 - Minor display updates 06/10/2005
v1.0.2 - More display updates 01/01/2006
v1.0.3 - UI & parsing improvements 17/02/2007
v1.0.4 - Fixed record store bug 19/06/2007
v1.1 - Improved parser 01/07/2007
v1.1.1 - Fixed edit bug 19/09/2007
v1.9 - Rewritten. Image support added, translations dropped (sorry) 26/02/2010
v1.91 - Improved the parser. UTF8 characters now display correctly 22/05/2010



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