June 18, 2007

Does MXNA work for you?

I'm kind of curious as to how many people visit Adobe's MXNA blog aggregator. I mean, the actual page for it. My experience is that the first page loads really well, the second page a bit slower, the third is crazy slow and most of the time the fourth page and on never load.

Should I be viewing MXNA some other way? Like an RSS aggregator or something? Is it just the web version? Could it be a browser issue (doesn't seem to matter though if I use firefox or IE)?

Being that MXNA just never seems to work beyond the 20th to 30th entry (and there are a LOT of blogs being aggregated so new stuff goes by fast) I almost always just go to fullasagoog. But I can't tell the last time Geoff updated it with a new blog, it doesn't seem to get new blogs.. but I could be way off.

Anyways, any advice on the MXNA thingy would be great if you happen to have some. Thanks.

Posted by Graeme at June 18, 2007 05:57 AM
　



Comments

The MXNA machine is reasonably powered, but not for its workload. Sequential pages load at the same slow pace for me. I do manage to check every post made into the main stream.

I was hoping for an update to it back towards 2005, but then the Adobe acquisition was announced, and lots of infrastructure work was put on hold. There's currently funding for integration of the staff publishing software, integrating both macromedia.com and adobe.com domains, but I'm hoping for improvements to the aggregation service as well.

Anyway, yes, MXNA is slow and frail, but I haven't seen a symptom of "can only display the first 30 records", myself.

jd/adobe

Posted by: John Dowdell at June 18, 2007 07:14 AM

I hammer the poor thing. Searching for articles, compiling a "what's been news for the month" for various user groups, etc. I give it a work-out.

I'm really glad it's there, though but it *is* a victim of it's own success with the 1300-odd blogs it aggregates.

I *have* to use it (as opposed to RSS feeds) - I move around a lot (diff machines) that having a one-stop URL is the best for my workflow.

ONE IMPROVEMENT:

Advanced search: remove the need for a "search term" eg:

SELECT * FROM weblogs
WHERE language = "EN"
AND category = "flex"
AND post_date > (month(now()) -1)

[no other search criteria needed]

Posted by: barry.b at June 18, 2007 08:58 AM

I visit it hourly.
I don't use an RSS reader - I have enough apps running.
I like just opening a link in a new tab and getting to it later or bookmarking it for even later.

But I also find it incredibly frail. Broken page several times a week are common. And the style sheet frequently gets busted by content so all entries are below side content. Never had the 30-item limit though.

Posted by: tom.alberts at June 18, 2007 10:07 AM

Try using the smart categories. They load *very* fast compared to the "lastest" (standard) method. I just go through the cats I want until I get to the ones I've already read.

Posted by: tom at June 18, 2007 10:23 AM

Thanks for all the responses. I'll try that smart categories one then. Hopefully it'll be faster than what I am experiencing now.

Most responses are pretty much what I expected though. Positive but still commenting on that it needs an upgrade for improved performance. Hopefully the MXNA team can get on it one day soon.

Graeme

Posted by: Graeme at June 18, 2007 12:35 PM

Hey you are SO write. Even I have observed this behaviour of MXNA. Adobe guys have to do some work on MXNA. I was using Thunderbird earlier but when I shifted to some other machine I had to visit the link. So I guess Adobe ppl have to work up on this.

Posted by: Rajesh Bhadra at June 18, 2007 08:17 PM

Just so you know, there is also Feed-Squirrel.com. Similar in a fashion to both MXNA and Fullasagoo, but the main difference is, it is fast, and regularly updated.

It also supports custom categories, so you only have to look at what you want.

Posted by: Neil Middleton at June 19, 2007 04:06 AM