Miniflux Checker Autor: will

<strong>Miniflux Checker</strong>

NOTE Development has stopped due to lack of developer time. See the Miniflux Checker Plus continuation on GitHub and also available on addons.mozilla.org here.

Miniflux Checker is a Firefox WebExtension that tracks unread items in a <a href="https://miniflux.app">Miniflux RSS reader</a> account. Specifically, it does the following:
<ul>
<li>Provides a toolbar icon that indicates the number of unread feed items</li>
<li>Creates desktop notifications when new items are detected</li>
</ul>
<strong>Setup</strong>
<ol>
<li>Install Miniflux Checker either from its <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/miniflux-checker/">addons.mozilla.org listing</a> or its <a href="https://github.com/willsALMANJ/miniflux-checker">GitHub page</a>.</li>
<li>Open the extension's preferences page from Addons manager and set the Miniflux URL and credentials. A token is preferred over username and password, see usage notes.</li>
<li>Place the toolbar icon in a visible location if you want to see the number of unread items.</li>
</ol>
<strong>Usage notes</strong>
<ul>
<li>Clicking the toolbar icon checks Miniflux for an update of the unread count and triggers notifications of any new items.
<ul>
<li>It only checks the current Miniflux state. It does not trigger Miniflux to refresh its feed data.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>The time between checks of the Miniflux state can be set in the preferences.</li>
<li>Notifications can be disabled in the preferences.</li>
<li>The maximum number of notifications shown in one check can be set in the preferences. If there are more, a final notification is shown with the number of additional new items. This behavior is used to avoid a flood of notifications from a noisy feed.</li>
<li>Notifications use the feed's favicon by default. In preferences, one can select to the Miniflux Checker icon for all notifications instead.</li>
<li>The last updated item's ID is stored internally. Only one notification should ever be shown for a given item.
<ul>
<li>This ID can be reset in the preferences in case the Miniflux account changes.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>The token/password is stored in the extension's local storage, effectively in clear text on the file system.
<ul>
<li>For this reason, using an API token is recommended since control over the account is not compromised if it is revealed.</li>
<li>Tokens can be generated in the "API Keys" section of Miniflux's settings for Miniflux versions 2.0.21 and later.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<strong>Ideas for future features</strong>
Miniflux Checker meets the author's original design goals, but here are some ideas for other features that could be added:
<ul>
<li>Reuse the credentials of a current browser session so no credentials need to be stored in preferences.</li>
<li>Open the Miniflux page from a notification or from the toolbar icon.</li>
<li>Show popup listing of unread items when clicking on toolbar icon.</li>
<li>Trigger refresh of Miniflux feeds when checking Miniflux.</li>
<li>Mark iems read from notifications or from the toolbar icon.</li>
</ul>
<strong>References</strong>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://miniflux.app">Miniflux</a></li>
<li>Miniflux Notifications (<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/miniflux-notifications/jpeplhckmjlpahnkpblakfligkbfefkg">Google Play</a>, <a href="https://github.com/modInfo/miniflux-chrome-notifier">GitHub</a>)
<ul>
<li>This project was only discovered after Minflux Checker was written. Otherwise, that project would have been ported to Firefox rather than creating a separate project. The Firefox Add-ons site was searched before writing Miniflux Checker but not the Chrome store. The feature request for in-client notifications was also monitored but nothing was posted there.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Miniflux Checker (this project) (<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/miniflux-checker/">Firefox Add-ons</a>, <a href="https://github.com/willsALMANJ/miniflux-checker">GitHub</a>)</li>
</ul>