Comments on: "Placeholder" for Google Reader?

Question: "Placeholder" for Google Reader?

illflux — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:53:46 -0800

Many of the feeds I follow have a lot of activity (such as the one for ask.mefi), so by the time I get a chance to look through them, there may be hundreds (thousands?) of items. If I'm not able to get through all of the items at a time, the next time I come back to the feed, I have to scroll through the items I did get to before I can reach the older items. Is there a way to "mark my place" in a feed and skip directly there, rather than having to scroll through all the already-read items? I have my "Feed Settings" set to "sort by newest" and have "In expanded view, mark items as read when you scroll past them" checked in my settings.

I've tried using "sort by oldest," but that only shows posts from within the last 30 days. Depending on how long it's been since I've had a chance to catch up with a feed, this may not be enough.

Perhaps as an alternative, is there a way to make "sort by oldest" show more than 30 days?

By: drezdn

drezdn — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:06:04 -0800

Do you have it set to only show you new items?

By: upplepop

upplepop — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:14:13 -0800

Along with setting it to only show you new items, go to Settings>Preferences and check the box next to "In expanded view, mark items as read when you scroll past them."

Now when you scroll through feeds, Reader will mark them as read and you won't see them again.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:22:17 -0800

Is there a way to "mark my place" in a feed and skip directly there, rather than having to scroll through all the already-read items?

If you have "In expanded view, mark items as read when you scroll past them" checked as you mention, you should never see old items.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:30:09 -0800

drezdn has it. In expanded view, you need to click "new items" rather than "all items."

By: Zarya

Zarya — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:09:26 -0800

I use NetNewsWire at home, and subscribe to quite a few very active feeds myself. I work a 4/10 (4 days/10 hours a day) shift, and it would be impossible for me to keep up without using Google Reader at work to at least skim all the feeds.

I tried the "mark as read after I scroll past", but it didn't quite do what I wanted. What I found works for me is that I "star" items that I want to read but don't have time to at that moment, then on my days off, I load Google Reader on my Mac and go through those starred items at my own leisure. This also keeps my main Google Reader page uncluttered, and starred items never disappear unless you un-star them.

By: illflux

illflux — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:29:03 -0800

Oh wow, thanks so much for showing me that! I had never noticed that the "Show:" area had 2 options ("n new items" OR "all items"). Sounds like this might help Zarya out as well.

Thanks again, this is really going to help!

By: jacalata

jacalata — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:24:18 -0800

No, Zarya's doing what I do - you read all the headlines, and take a note of which ones you're going to read in full later.