Problem Description
Matter is a fantastic app for reading blog posts, articles - especially long ones, newsletters and such. Distraction-free reading. Simple elegant user interface. Ability to subscribe to blogs and newsletters. However, there is one feature I love to have in Matter.
Many times, authors publish a series of posts under a given topic. Breaking down a big topic into multiple parts is convenient for readers. And for authors. Typically, the count of posts in a series ranges from 3 to 15.
Here is an example of an excellent series: Coding and ADHD Brains. This series has six posts.
Pain point #1
The only way to add/import these posts in a series into Matter is to add them one by one. Instead it would be great to bulk import. For example, provide a list of post urls (in the input box when you click + in the app) to import them in one go. This solves one piece of the puzzle.
Pain point #2
Even if bulk import is implemented, there is still a pain point in terms of organization. Bulk import would just import all the urls and litter it in the Queue. It is not inherently possible to say that these posts belong to a series; unless the author decides to use the same title with a part number. Even so, the posts may be scattered in the queue depending on the parts you read and how the queue is sorted.
You could provide the option to assign Tags for all the posts during bulk import. But Tag is not the right taxonomy for this case (although it is convenient to assign Tags during bulk import).
Feature Description
What would be great is to support an alternative taxonomy. Let us call it Series.
- You should be able to create a Series to which you should be able to add new urls or already imported posts / articles. In the Queue, the Series should show up as a line item with ▶ icon on the right denoting that there are posts inside.
- During bulk import, Matter should provide an option to either create a Series for the posts being imported or assign to an existing Series.
While there are standards like RSS or atom, AFAIK, there isn’t any standard for denoting a series. If such a standard exists, Matter could import the series of posts into a Series automatically, which would be super awesome.
Finally
- This is a composite feature request, meaning there are multiple parts to the target feature requested. So, it may be broken down and implemented iteratively to deliver the final product.
- Take the design aspects of the feature discussed here lightly. Matter’s design team is definitely way more creative than me. I am sure they will improve it greatly if Matter decides to take up this feature request.
I have shared this request with the Matter team a few weeks back. Let us see what they decide.
