Archive for July 14th, 2006

Feed Reader Search Topic Wavelength

In my search to find a better solution to reading my subscribed feeds in a standalone desktop client, it seems other people are thinking about reading feeds as well.

Online, Offline or Both

Just this morning David at BloggingPro, wrote about his use of feed readers and offers his opinion and habits using online services such as Bloglines and offline clients like FeedDemon. My own experience using most online tools—not just feed readers—is that they are slow and changing settings is often takes two to three times as many steps vs. a standalone application.

Folder and the River

This afternoon, Robert Scoble noted that he prefers the folder to the river as a method for reading posts. This is the way I have been reading feeds this last few months. I had tried browser extensions and then switched to the feed reading support in Thunderbird but became frustrated with a lack of control of my feed appearance.

Cautious Conversion to FeedReader

My search led me to install FeedReader. I am a cautious convert. I had no trouble installing the application but I found that its default display was too small and the contrast was too low. Fortunately, if you know Cascading Style Sheets, changing the display is quite easy using the XSL file.

NewsGator Doesn’t Make it Easy

After a comment from NewsGator regarding my complaint that I was unable to download their reader for the 30-day trial, I successfully downloaded and installed it. Too bad after importing my OPML file from FeedReader, FeedDemon kept coming up with errors. Sorry NewsGator, two failures and you’ve lost me. Seemed like it would be a good application but who has the time to debug commercial software issues. (Jack Brewster: I don’t have an hour to uninstall and reinstall and go through the process of trying to make it work. Maybe I will revisit this soon.

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2 comments July 14th, 2006

In Search of a Desktop Feed Reader Client

I posted the other day about unsubscribing from blogs because I was getting only partial feeds and no link. I have come to realize that the bloggers in question are not to blame and it is really a function of my feed reader client. On an average day I read between 20-50 posts. I don’t necessarily read the whole post. I usually skim the article and if they are sending me partial feeds it takes me out of flow.

I have been managing and reading feeds using Mozilla Thunderbird. It has worked for me for a number of reasons but for me the killer is that I can organized feeds into category folders instead of having a huge list of feeds organized by title or feed URL. As a stop-gap it would be good if Thunderbird could determine if it was a full or partial feed and then attach the permalink to the bottom of the post so I don’t have to drop down the header to find the link and click on it.

Ideally what I want is a feed reading application that doesn’t require me to have to switch applications while reading. Either Thunderbird could further integrate its HTML support and Flash as well have the links to feeds open in the preview pane instead of having to switch to Firefox.

I know that there a number of desktop feed readers as well as some browser integrated readers. Which ones work the best and why.

As I write this post I have downloaded and installed Feedreader 3.05 and it looks promising. I have also attempted to download News Gator’s Feed Demon but for some reason when I click to download on their site I receive a JavaScript prompt for a username and password.

I’ll post soon with the results.

Thanks Jules for making me try something new.

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6 comments July 14th, 2006


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