[Nook Touch Themes and Apps] nmyshkin:
9-4-21: Updated to version 1.4...chasing down more SSL issues. Uninstall old version before installing new one.

If you've taken a look at my BBC News app and then decided it just wasn't worth the hassle negotiating the BBC News website (what's with the keyboard opening and closing as the pages load?!), this new approach might be for you. BBC News Reader is an app for offline reading. No visits to the BBC News website

at all

!

How it works

On the front end, this app is the same as the BBC News app. You select some RSS feed topics and simple, clean HTML pages are generated for your browser with the various news items. That's where the similarities end. The new app then downloads the pages corresponding to the news stories, extracts just the article text, assembles clean, new pages and saves them to your SD card. Voila! You can read the news offline--anywhere.

Limitations

Well, it takes awhile... I have four news topics and it takes about 5 minutes to fetch and process everything. So maybe you run this while you're fixing your breakfast (or taking a shower). To make the time as short as possible, I have also limited the stories to the current date. If you've looked at the RSS feeds you know that things tend to accumulate and languish, especially in the less active feeds. After awhile items become history rather than news. So, just the current date. Also, you get no pictures (or videos you cannot play anyway). News items that refer to a page with just a video will have a very short text description so you'll know there's something missing. Items which are photo collections will have a list of captions. But everything looks good without any extraneous stuff. Unlike my local newspaper where each page seems to be assembled by a different monkey on a different medication, the BBC News pages are uniform and predictable. So far. Note that you

cannot

use this app with Opera Mini. It lacks the ability to open local HTML files.

Requirements

1. Android 2.1 has a security issue with opening local HTML files. In order for BBC News Reader to work properly you need to address that. Included in the zip below is a tiny app, android-open-in-browser-0.0.4-4-debug. Install that. It's not my app but I have used it for years and wish I could credit the originator.

2. This app utilizes cURL, a Linux utility, to bypass SSL checks and enable our aging device to download from the BBC News site. You must install cURL on your NST. Download the zip file (below), unzip and follow the directions to install cURL. Reboot.

3. This is a Tasker-generated app. If you already have one of my other Tasker-generated apps or have previously installed GApps, you don't need the two Google maps library files included in the zip and can delete them. If you do need them, copy the two files into the locations shown below:

/system/etc/permissions/com.google.android.maps.xml

/system/framework/com.google.android.maps.jar

Set permissions for both files to rw-r--r-- and reboot. Without these files resident, the app will not install.

4. Create a folder in the root directory of your sdcard: BBCNews (exactly as shown, no spaces)

5. Install the app itself, BBC_News_Reader_1_3.apk

How to use

Before you run the app you need to select some news categories. You can get the feed URLs from the BBC News RSS page. Only part of the URL is used in the file bbc_rss_feeds.txt. Here is the file as I have supplied it in the attached zip:

<cat>World</cat>
<url>/news/world/rss.xml</url>
<cat>US & Canada</cat>
<url>/news/world/us_and_canada/rss.xml</url>

I've just used two example feeds. You can see that the first line in each pair is a news category name (don't use names with "." in them). The second line in each pair is the last part of the RSS feed URL from the BBC News site. Be sure to edit out the first part of the URL or the app will not work. You can, of course, choose other/additional categories. Just follow my example. When the file is complete, copy it to the "BBCNews" folder on your SD card.

Note: if you have a copy of this file already because you have been using the original BBC News app, just copy the old file.

Now you're good to go. Start the app, make sure you're connected to WiFi. There are only three buttons on the app screen (screenshot below). The first one, "Fetch the news" does just that. The interface will disappear and eventually you will see a toast near the bottom of the screen telling you that the news is being prepared in the background. Once that is done, a second interface appears (screenshot below) with the options to either read the news or dismiss the interface. If you choose "read", your browser will open with the first news category. At the title bar left is a drop-down menu button that gives you access to your other news topics. Since no fixed navbar schemes work under Android 2.1, there is a duplicate drop-up menu bar at the end of the page. If you choose "dismiss" it's all done until you start the app again at which time you would select "read the news". No WiFi connection needed since the files are on your SD card.