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Opening the Instapaper API

blog.instapaper.com

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Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#11

Post by evgen »

pornel wrote: post #9
john2x wrote: post #8

One gripe I have with Instapaper is how it formats code blocks. It doesn't look right at all (at least on the iPad version).

And they remove some images, so Wikipedia articles about math (with symbols as images) don't make sense. Diagrams and illustrations are often silently gone. I keep reporting "some text/images missing", but overall I lost faith that I can read articles on Instapaper without missing anything.

It was the long-standing failure to handle code blocks and pull in images that moved me from Instapaper to Pocket. Have not looked back and finally got around to just nuking the instapaper app on my phone. After getting an early lead on the offline article niche Instapaper just squandered any goodwill by doing nothing to improve the product.

Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#12

Post by piokoch »

This surprises me a bit:

"All requests should be made via the POST method, and all parameters should be passed in the POST request-body and not in the query-string."

So even typical GET are sent as POST (/api/1/bookmarks/list)

Is there any reason to do that?

Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#14

Post by hartror »

piokoch wrote: post #12

This surprises me a bit: "All requests should be made via the POST method, and all parameters should be passed in the POST request-body and not in the query-string." So even typical GET are sent as POST (/api/1/bookmarks/list) Is there any reason to do that?

It gets even better:

> If the response is not valid JSON, it should be interpreted as an HTTP 503 "Service Temporarily Unavailable" error, and the request should be retried later.

Why not just return 503?

Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#16

Post by paulhallett »

piokoch wrote: post #12

This surprises me a bit: "All requests should be made via the POST method, and all parameters should be passed in the POST request-body and not in the query-string." So even typical GET are sent as POST (/api/1/bookmarks/list) Is there any reason to do that?

I think we've encountered another situation where developers who don't fully understand HTTP best practices and standards, are asked to adapt their internal API services to work on the web :(

Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#17

Post by hartror »

piokoch wrote: post #12

This surprises me a bit: "All requests should be made via the POST method, and all parameters should be passed in the POST request-body and not in the query-string." So even typical GET are sent as POST (/api/1/bookmarks/list) Is there any reason to do that?

The xAuth authentication method is suspect as well:

    xAuth provides a way for desktop and mobile
    applications to exchange a username and password for
    an OAuth access token. Once the access token is
    retrieved, xAuth-enabled developers should dispose of
    the login and password corresponding to the user.
https://dev.twitter.com/oauth/xauth

Asking users to trust third parties with the access details to your application? Sure they "review" the API token requests but who knows what that means.

Reading the page there seems to be a lot of talk about "keeping it simple" as if using the HTTP protocol is hard and confusing for developers. This is a bad sign, if they don't understand or care to understand something simple what are their security practices like?

Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#18

Post by on_and_off »

totalcookie wrote: post #10

Too late. I was a long time, paying customer but moved to Pocket.

On Android especially, the Instapaper app is way behind the Pocket one.

Pocket mostly applies successfully the latest Android design principles. It is not perfect, but it is a solid implementation.

Instapaper looks like it has been written by somebody discovering the support lib along the way. Bad drawer implementation, no attention to detail. It does not even look like the dev is using its own app, because there are some seriously low hanging fruit that should be easy to solve (for example I can't click on the drawer icon, only on the title for some reason).

It's hard to justify a subscription with such a weak effort and it is probably a vicious circle where the dev doesn't have a reason to improve his app either.

Re: Opening the Instapaper API

#19

Post by rb2k_ »

I still love the UI of instapaper a lot more than the one pocket has on their iOS version.

The main reason I switched to pocket was that Instapaper doesn't seem to have support for PDFs.

I don't need any of the "position syncing" and other stuff. I just want to be able to download the PDF and view it offline in the same app that helps me do this to blogposts.

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