A web app in 10k? Surely not!
When @stueccles first encouraged me to enter the 10k apart competition (to create a web app in under 10 kilobytes) I wondered what was really possible in only 10k. After a little tinkering I realised quite a lot.
Introducing the 10k Feed Board
Drawing inspiration from the recently released Flipboard app on the iPad I set about building an app that allowed you to browse Flickr photos and Twitter searches. You can configure a set of panels with different search criteria, choosing from either a Flickr search, Flickr set or a Twitter search. The app then makes use of Yahoo’s YQL service to retrieve the data and populate the panels for you to navigate around. It takes advantage of the new localStorage feature of HTML 5 compliant browsers to persist your queries, meaning that you can come back time and again without losing your search terms. The drawback here, of course, is that you need a modern browser for it to work – Sorry all you IE users – looks like you’ll have to upgrade to a proper browser (IE9 Dev Preview,Firefox or a WebKit browser)!
Take a look at the 10k Feed Board here.
Beyond the 10k limit
With the competition’s 10 kilobyte restrictions I had to limit the content types to Flickr photos and Twitter searches but I will be taking the concept further to include RSS and Atom feed content – it will then become a nice new way to consume all your feed content.
I will also shortly be blogging about the technical aspects of the app – localStorage; how to consume YQL data; and the associated problems of dealing with multiple feed types.
2 comments
Nice work Ol -kinda like Tweetdeck right ? Interested also to hear your comments on browsers >> Safari any good in your eyes ?
Thanks Rob. It’s a little like tweet deck but with Flickr included. As mentioned in my post I’m going to be extending it to include RSS feeds so, then it will really come into its own.
Safari is a good browser but I’d recommend Google Chrome – much quicker, especially on a PC.