NetNewsWire is the Mac application that satisfies my feed reading needs. In August 2003, with Version 1.0.4b3, Brent applied Web Kit and custom CSS stylesheets to task of presenting feed content in NetNewsWire. Since then I've been tweaking custom styles for my own use and amusement. This project page brings them together.

• My first NetNewsWire stylesheet
• Ollicle Crisp
• Ollicle X-ray
• Ollicle Flex
• Ollicle Reflex
• jDefault
• Ollicle Wittrodt

My first NetNewsWire stylesheet

Updated: 24 August 2003

Initially untitled, this was the first NetNewsWire style to use fixed positioning to keep the title of the entry visible when scrolling.

ollicle.com entry: NetNewsWire meets Web Kit

Updated: 11 September 2003

My own use of the style revealed a few issues with long titles that motivated an update: ollicle_nnw.css. This version also included a maximum width on the news item description to prevent uncomfortable lengths of hard to read text.

ollicle.com entry: Updated NetNewsWire stylesheet

I made a few more little changes to this style up until the release of the beta of NetNewsWire 2.

Download: View ollicle_nnw.css

Ollicle Crisp

Updated: 27 October 2004

NetNewsWire 2 (the non-lite version anyway) added a number of new elements to the display of each feed. I took the opportunity to make a fresh break and named the evolved version of my style 'Ollicle Crisp'.

The 'meta' information of each feed is presented in a neat block to right of the description. When reading feeds using NetNewsWire's traditional layout the meta block, like the title, holds it's position when you scroll the window.

In contrast, when using the widescreen layout you are likely to expect the feed text to span the full width of HTML pane leaving no space for the meta block. Ollicle Crisp works around this problem by using some layout specific styles. In the widescreen view the meta block sits out of the way - underneath the news item description. The combined view does not display this meta information anyway.

Also, when NetNewsWire's preference for highlighting feed changes is enabled, passing your cursor over the description of a feed will toggle the display of the <ins> and <del> elements created to emphasise differences between the current and previous versions of a news item description.

ollicle.com entry: New NetNewsWire CSS

Download: Ollicle Crisp

Ollicle X-ray

Updated: 15 November 2004

An excuse to play with possiblities offered by generating content with CSS, this experimental stylesheet still proves occasionally useful for a quick look under the hood of the markup of the viewed news item.

ollicle.com entry: Inside-out NetNewsWire stylesheet

Download: Ollicle X-Ray

Ollicle Flex

Updated: 4 February 2006

Built on the CSS foundations of Ollicle Crisp; This style introduces presentational JavaScript to improve feed reading comfort in NetNewsWire in ways CSS alone cannot.

• Resizes large images to fit your HTML pane width.
• Optimises text line-height (leading), also depending on your window width.
• Switch between two layout options with a click (great for photo blogs and comics!) and;
• Stores this preference per feed (with a cookie).

ollicle.com entry: NetNewsWire style with free cookies

Download: Ollicle Flex

Ollicle Reflex

An evolutionary improvement on Flex. Makes use of the wonderful jQuery to help stretch what's possible in a NewNewsWire style further again.

Download and details

jDefault

Updated: 17 August 2007

jDefault is a bare-bones NetNewsWire style that loads my image resizing JavaScript, and the jQuery library it uses, into the default NetNewsWire template. To ‘enable’ any existing style built without a custom template.html file, simply replace the contained stylesheet.css with the corresponding file from your selected style.

ollicle.com entry: jDefault - Image resizing for your NetNewsWire style

Download: jDefault

Ollicle Wittrodt

Updated: 7 February 2008

This stylesheet for NetNewsWire loads the linked web page instead of displaying the feed itself. It is a simple hack born from a question posed to the NetNewsWire email group.

ollicle.com entry: NetNewsWire style hack - Show web page instead of feed

Download: Ollicle Wittrodt