HK Live News
HK Live News brings the latest Chinese-language RTHK headlines into the VS Code status bar. It scrapes RTHK Latest News with Puppeteer and opens the selected article in your browser.
Features
- Loads up to 20 current RTHK Chinese news headlines.
- Starts automatically when VS Code finishes starting, then refreshes every five minutes.
- Advances to the next loaded headline every minute.
- Shows the active headline, its position, and previous/next controls in the status bar.
- Uses a fixed-width headline area, truncating long titles with
...; hover over a headline to read its full title and article text.
- Opens the selected RTHK article when its headline is clicked.
The status bar uses this layout:
< 1/20 > HK headline...
Usage
- Open VS Code. HK Live News starts refreshing automatically after startup completes.
- Use the status-bar arrows or keyboard shortcuts to move through the current headlines.
- Click a headline to open its RTHK article.
- Run Start Refreshing HK News (default 5 mins) from the Command Palette to restart scheduled refreshing after it has been stopped.
Commands
| Command |
Description |
HK Live News: Start Refreshing HK News (default 5 mins) |
Fetches current news and starts five-minute refreshes. |
HK Live News: Manually refresh HK News |
Fetches the latest headlines immediately. |
HK Live News: Stop Refreshing HK News |
Stops scheduled refreshes. |
HK Live News: Show Next HK News Headline |
Selects the next headline. |
HK Live News: Show Previous HK News Headline |
Selects the previous headline. |
Keyboard Shortcuts
| Shortcut |
Action |
Alt+D |
Show the next headline. |
Alt+A |
Show the previous headline. |
Requirements
- VS Code
1.125.0 or later.
- Network access to
news.rthk.hk.
- A Puppeteer-compatible Chrome installation. If Puppeteer did not download Chrome during dependency installation, run:
pnpm exec puppeteer browsers install chrome
On Linux, Chrome may also require the system libraries listed in the Puppeteer troubleshooting guide.
Development
pnpm install
pnpm run compile
pnpm run lint
pnpm test
Run pnpm run watch while developing to continuously compile the extension.
Publishing to the VS Code Marketplace
The extension is configured for the mchu1966 Marketplace publisher. Before the first release:
- Create or sign in to the publisher account at Visual Studio Marketplace.
- Create an Azure DevOps personal access token with the Marketplace > Manage scope.
- Add that token to the GitHub repository as the
VSCE_PAT Actions secret.
Create a tagged release to publish:
pnpm run lint
pnpm run package
git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0
The tag triggers the publish workflow. The tag version must match the version in package.json. For a local publish, set VSCE_PAT in your shell and run pnpm run publish.
Known Limitations
- Headline and article extraction depends on the current RTHK page structure. A site redesign can require scraper updates.
- The extension displays up to 50 headlines per refresh.
- No extension settings are currently provided; refreshing is fixed at five minutes and automatic headline rotation at one minute.
- VS Code does not provide extensions with status-bar hover events, so automatic rotation cannot pause specifically while the headline tooltip is open. Use Stop Refreshing HK News to pause it.
Release Notes
1.0.0
- First stable release of HK Live News.
- Brings current Chinese-language RTHK headlines to the VS Code status bar.
- Includes automatic five-minute refreshes, one-minute headline rotation, status-bar navigation, and article links.
License
MIT
