Choosing more suitable feed reader after Netvibes

November 23, 2008 3:00 AM

Feedreader that fits my needs? Shows read feeds, has good browser view...

I was using Netvibes until now but it is developing in a direction that I don't like so I want to move to more usable feed reader. I tried Google Reader, Feed Demon and Newzie but there is some stuff that they lack or I don't know how to unlock.
One of the things that I need is to see as many as possible from my list ordered by categories and feeds and not by read and unread. I basically refer too much to already read feeds so I need them to be there too.
The other thing that I need is to see the post in the feed reader as I will be able to see it on the actual page. This was something Netvibes had and it helped with blogs that don't offer their full posts, cause when you switch to this mode you still browse the blog in your reader, you just get the actual page.
From all three that I tried Google Reader looked the most promising but it still lacks the second feature.

posted by tseo to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I'm really enjoying Google Reader. It does not show you the original web site, just the RSS feed condensed version, but you can click V on the keyboard to easily open the original item in a new tab.

You can toggle settings to show all feeds, including those that have been read. Also - the search box works great.
posted by kdern at 5:54 AM on November 23, 2008

I like FeedReader. I've always been a bit mystified by their business model since it's free, nothing is locked, and there's no advertising, but it's not open source, but now I see that they apparently customize OEM versions of it. Those devious Estonians.
posted by XMLicious at 6:04 AM on November 23, 2008

Are you on a Mac? One of the few things that I really miss from the Mac and can't find a Linux replacement for is NetNewsWire. Three paned like an email client and you can set it up to get the full page views you are looking for, and if you use multiple machines you can sync it with other copies of NetNewsWire or a NewsGator online account. It can do a lot of crazy stuff you wont find in a web based reader. And it has tabs, glorious tabs...
posted by quarterframer at 7:02 AM on November 23, 2008

I use Netvibes and I'm a little confused as to what you're looking for. Particularly:

One of the things that I need is to see as many as possible from my list ordered by categories and feeds and not by read and unread. I basically refer too much to already read feeds so I need them to be there too.

Not really sure what this is, and how NV falls short, but I guess I'm curious about what they lack. I have categories, use web page view, keep read articles around, etc. so maybe there's a way around switching. I'm not an employee, just a semi-satisfied user.
posted by rhizome at 12:28 PM on November 23, 2008

rhizome: actually Netvibes has the features that I need but is developing toward sharing and prepared universes and stuff that I don't need. It's also buggy from time to time and not very ordered from my personal point of view. I was looking for something else, I just felt the need to move on to something else which has more simple interface but without losing some of the things that I got used to.

quarterframer: I've heard only good stuff about NetNewsWire but I use Windows now:(


Generally I see that thing go toward Google Reader for now but I am surprised cause I really expected that desktop readers will offer more flexibility.
posted by tseo at 12:33 PM on November 23, 2008

tseo: "One of the things that I need is to see as many as possible from my list ordered by categories and feeds and not by read and unread. I basically refer too much to already read feeds so I need them to be there too."

Google Reader allows access to all your read feeds -- you may have to toggle this view, though. I can't recall what the default setting is, but it's easy enough to flip: just click the "all items" link on the left-hand side of the blue bar above the list of items.

You can also view old items from multiple feeds by organizing your feeds into folders, then clicking on the folder title. It will show you a list of all items in those feeds sorted from oldest to newest, not necessarily read and unread.

There's also the stellar (heh) starring feature, which lets you mark certain items you'd like to return to and which creates an independent list for them. And, coming from Google, there's naturally a robust search feature.

"The other thing that I need is to see the post in the feed reader as I will be able to see it on the actual page. This was something Netvibes had and it helped with blogs that don't offer their full posts, cause when you switch to this mode you still browse the blog in your reader, you just get the actual page.

From all three that I tried Google Reader looked the most promising but it still lacks the second feature."

Then you're (maybe) in luck! If you use Firefox and have the versatile Greasemonkey extension installed, you can add a userscript that will allow you to open the full HTML web page for each item within a text box on the page.

Screenshot

As a bonus, this script operates in Google Reader's "list view", meaning each item is displayed as merely a headline, maximizing the amount of content on your screen. You can also customize the script to disable it on select feeds, if you prefer displaying them in the standard RSS way. It's great for sites like Lifehacker that choose to place their content below a massive navigation banner that eats up most of the preview box.

You can get Greasemonkey here, and install the userscript here.

Also, if you don't use Firefox, Wikipedia's article on Greasemonkey has a handy section that discusses and links to Greasemonkey equivalents in other browsers, some of which are compatible with GM's userscripts.

Good luck!
posted by Rhaomi at 1:49 PM on November 23, 2008

The Greasemonkey script Rhaomi mentions (which is very handy indeed) is part of Lifehacker's Better gReader extension.
posted by itesser at 5:11 PM on November 23, 2008

I used to lurrrrve Bloglines, and nothing else came close, but then NetNewsWire stopped being able to sync with it, and NewsGator is rubbish, so I'm web-rss lonely right now.

So basically, if you don't need to sync with anything desktop-based, I'd recommend Bloglines.
posted by Magnakai at 5:39 PM on November 23, 2008