Read It Later’s Future

I wanted to brief everyone on what my plans are for the Read It Later extension as it’s now been two months since the last update. I’ve been ignoring you while I was working on Tail Report. Tail Report is happily cranking away so now it’s time for Read It Later again. The next update (0.9) will only be for Firefox 3. The bookmarking service built into Firefox has been completely revamped between FF 2 and 3. It’s great because they finally have a solid bookmark API that will make the Read It Later extension much more stable. Before I literally had to pour through thousands of lines of the Firefox source code to figure out how to make it do the simplest tasks. But this also means that Read It Later will have to be rebuilt to work on Firefox 3. This gives me the opportunity to make some decisions about which features will carry over, which won’t, and what new features will be added.

So I’m asking you dudes and dudines for two things:

1. Suggestions - If you have any suggestions on features you wish it had, now is the time to voice them. If you see a suggestion from someone in the comments and you like it, second it. 2. What You Like Now - In addition to telling me what you want, tell me what you like about it the way it is now. I want to know what features people are using.

One more thing:

I also wanted to gauge how you feel about the current method of storing/retrieving your list. Are you happy with the way it is working now? Do you prefer having the list stored locally on your computer or would you like a way to access it online? I originally tried to keep things simple without requiring you to sign up for another service but perhaps you are interested in having your list hosted with an RSS feed.

Timeline

The timeline for this new release hasn’t been decided upon yet. I’m still waiting to see how things are shaping up with the official release of Firefox 3 out of Beta. But I promise you this update is coming and hopefully soon.