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{ 2003 10 27 }

BottomFeeder for OS X Mini-Review

I downloaded BottomFeeder, a SmallTalk powered blogging tool. I was really overjoyed to see it being a cross-platform piece of software with OS X support. So I glady downloaded it and started looking through it. Here is what I found…

  • First off, the manual didn’t have any explanation besides the bare minimum for how to get this running in OS X. Plenty of instructions for Windoze users. How the hell is this supposed to work? How am I supposed to install it? Okay whatever I can figure this out…
  • When I uncompressed it I just found a directory full of files. There wasn’t an Application Bundle that I could just drag around and start up. It seems there was some file called bottomFeeder. What’s that? Is that the executable? Clicking on it in the Finder didn’t do squat. How am I supposed to make this run anything?
  • A little thought I drop into the Terminal then try typing ./bottomFeeder. Now a window pops up that says ‘Open’. What the heck is that for? Oh I get… it’s a SmallTalk program looking for an image. Okay…. I’m supposed to find the image file. Just look for the large file sitting around.
  • Next I try, ./bottomFeeder bottomFeeder.im
  • I start looking through the menus. Hmmm doesn’t look that bad. I want to import all my NetNewsWire subscriptions into it. I just need to use the Import subscriptions. Hey… wait where’s the .opml import? I try loading All Files and then loading it in, no go. I wanna quit… Cmd-q. No?
  • Ugh, this is the last straw. BottomFeeder for Windows might work quite well and integrate well with the Windows GUI however for OS X it’s an embarassment. Nothing in the DOck, nothing in the Finder Bar on top, no instructions on how to get started. And the last straw… how come it can import piles of different file types but NOT the one I need to use??? Geez

Score: 1/10
At least the thing runs and does stuff but I can’t do any blogging in this thing. Back to the drawing board. If this is supposed to show SmallTalk’s power I’m not convinced. I want to be a believer but not with a demonstration like that.

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Posted by hoanga on Monday, October 27, 2003, at 5:32 am. Filed under mac, osx. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

{ 2 } Comments

  1. Marcus | December 17, 2003 at 4:06 pm | Permalink

    Did you find software that will do this better for free? I was only able to get BottomFeeder running with your instructions and I was also unimpressed with the GUI and OS integration but unless there’s a replacement, I might learn to live with it.

  2. Alain Hoang | December 18, 2003 at 3:27 am | Permalink

    Hi Marcus,

    Personally I use NetNewsWire Lite from Ranchero to read most of my blogs however the free version cannot post to blogs however I did try the payware version and it blogs quite nicely and has many really great features however at the moment I’ve not shelled out any money for it yet. In general I just post from a web interface for now since it does enough for me.
    I’ve been exploring a server based RSS Reader so I can run the aggregator on my home server and then just connect to that to read however I’ve not found I really like just yet.