"Placeholder" for Google Reader?

January 10, 2008 8:53 AM

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?

posted by illflux to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: Do you have it set to only show you new items?
posted by drezdn at 9:06 AM on January 10, 2008

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.
posted by upplepop at 9:14 AM on January 10, 2008

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.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:22 AM on January 10, 2008

Best answer: drezdn has it. In expanded view, you need to click "new items" rather than "all items."
posted by mattbucher at 9:30 AM on January 10, 2008

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.
posted by Zarya at 10:09 AM on January 10, 2008

Response by poster: 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!
posted by illflux at 10:29 AM on January 10, 2008

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.
posted by jacalata at 1:24 PM on January 10, 2008