Looking for a Bloglines replacement with specific requirements...

September 28, 2010 12:39 PM

Looking for a replacement for the soon-to-be-gone RSS reader Bloglines. Specific requirements inside...

(This is sort of a follow-up to this AskMe. Though, please note Bloglines' last day has been moved from October 1st to November 1st and my requests are more specific.)

Me: Web using RSS consumer

You:

• Web based RSS reader
• Sporting a spiffy "Beta Bloglines" view. That is, a three-pane display (screenshot), kind of like outlook express or thunderbird:
1. Pane 1: List of feeds (a vertical list on the left side of the screen)
2. Pane 2: List of entries in selected feed (top of screen)
3. Pane 3: Details of the selected entry (bottom of screen)
• Remembers to automatically mark items as read. (Bloglines did this when the user scrolled the text of an entry completely off screen in Pane 2 or Pane 3, I think.)


• Preferably free


• No smokers

Thanks.

posted by bodega to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Google Reader is pretty close to this, except for the distinction between Pane 2 and Page 3 - you have to use "Show Expanded/List" to select either view but can't do both at the same time. On the other hand, in Google Reader you don't have to click through your list items to see the preview - you can just keep clicking Next Item at the bottom of the screen to flip through entries in either view.
posted by beagle at 12:51 PM on September 28, 2010

Google Reader is pretty much the only viable option as far as I can tell.
posted by COD at 1:03 PM on September 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

Actually it looks like Feedreader has a 3-pane view also.
posted by beagle at 1:08 PM on September 28, 2010

Response by poster: I've been trying Google Reader for a few days and will learn to live with it if that's the best there is. But, I do miss the everything-at-once feel of the three-pane view.

I just looked at feedreader. Their main product requires a download, so pass on that. But it looks like they are testing a 3-pane view web based version: http://web.feedreader.com/. Though, the lack of importing makes this not very useful. (Also, it's pretty slow.)
posted by bodega at 2:01 PM on September 28, 2010

I use and love Netvibes, it has a 2 pane Reader view like Google Reader, but also has a widget view, which I prefer (example). The widget view gives you a variation on 3 pane view

-tabs of categories of feeds
-list of entries
-entry details

I particularly like the ability to browse through one feed with the titles on the left and entries on the right. Click an entry to see what I mean.

The public page I created to show my friends how I read the internet doesn't allow me to show the reader view, but it's much like google reader.
posted by Gor-ella at 2:02 PM on September 28, 2010

Google Reader -- BUT! With the incredible amazing free Feedly frontend.
posted by Jairus at 3:37 PM on September 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

I came in to recommend Feedly as well. You can use Feedly directly without setting up Google reader. It does require you to have a Google account. I use both Chrome and Firefox and Feedly works like a charm on both of them, it is not available for IE. I was a long time Bloglines user until Bloglines kept having too many issues. I tried Google reader and hated it. I love the Feedly interface and the various views it offers. I always used folders to group feeds on Bloglines, Feedly has a similar set up with categories. Feedly's drag and drop interface makes feed management easy (and I thought Bloglines was easy).

I am still craving a bookmarklet like Bloglines' that allowed me to add new sources to my Bloglines from anywhere on the web.
posted by Librarygeek at 10:01 PM on September 28, 2010

As of 11/5, it looks like Bloglines will be up and running until 12/1/2010 and then transitioned to a new domain.
posted by yerfatma at 6:46 AM on November 5, 2010