{"id":162,"date":"2005-10-05T09:58:40","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T15:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/?p=162"},"modified":"2005-10-05T09:58:40","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T15:58:40","slug":"finding-an-rss-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/10\/05\/finding-an-rss-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding An RSS Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I thought I'd try and step up my web-feed game by downloading a few \"feed readers\" and check them out.   I did a search to try and find some good ones.  Wikipedia has <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_news_aggregators\">this page<\/a> listing many, but it unfortunately it is light on details and (of course) does not provide a review-type information since Wikipedia's goal is to be non-biased.  <!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"ads\"><object type=\"text\/html\" width=\"468\" height=\"60\" data=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/gads.php\"><\/object><\/div>\n<h2>The Requirements<\/h2>\n<p>Requirements were that it was free to download and was being actively worked on.  Support of Atom 1.0 would also be a plus since this is a recent development.  I decided to go with three applications:  RSSOwl, RSSBandit and SharpReader.  This is by no means an indication that these three are the best, I just picked them because they sounded half-decent from the Wikipedia page and their web pages showed that they were actively being maintained.  Generally speaking, if software hasn't been updated for anything close to a year, I consider it to be \"abandonware\", especially in the area of RSS\/Atom readers since this is such a up-and-coming technology (for the masses anyway).<\/p>\n<p>I should mention up front that my work environment is behind a corporate firewall\/proxy server that requires authentication.  In my mind this is an average setup for any regular day-to-day user.  I should also put a disclaimer in here that it is ENTIRELY possible that my failures are a result of simply not configuring the right setting (i.e. \"my fault\").  But on the other hand, I consider myself an advanced computer user so this should really reflect how an average user will view the product.<\/p>\n<p>Here are my results:<\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rssowl.org\/\">RSSOwl<\/a> 1.2 Preview (last updated September 25, 2005)<\/h2>\n<p>The BAD:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I had to manually configure the proxy server<\/li>\n<li>Shoved an icon into my taskbar without asking<\/li>\n<li>Couldn't select multiple entries to mark as \"Unread\"<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The GOOD:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>quick and painless install<\/li>\n<li>Built in Java, so I'm assuming cross-platform<\/li>\n<li>Fast application startup<\/li>\n<li>Traditional and intuitive 3-pane \"Outlook\" interface with multiple tabs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rssbandit.org\/\">RSS Bandit<\/a> 1.3.0.29 (last updated April 12, 2005):  <\/h2>\n<p>The BAD:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SLLLLLOW install!!!  I have a feeling this is because it uses .NET (though I could be wrong)<\/li>\n<li>Shoved an icon onto my desktop without asking<\/li>\n<li>Seemed to have a slower UI refresh and much slower application startup than RSSOwl<\/li>\n<li>It did not allow importing of proxy server settings automatically<\/li>\n<li>Improperly filled in the proxy server port as 8080 (mine is 1080) which fooled me and initially caused some connection problems, though this is admittedly mostly my fault<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The GOOD:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Slicker user interface than RSSOwl<\/li>\n<li>traditional and intuitive 3-pane \"Outlook\" interface with multiple tabs<\/li>\n<li>Better rendering of feeds than RSSOwl<\/li>\n<li>Seemed to skip ads in my own feed (http:\/\/blog.codedread.com\/feed\/rss2\/), though I'm not 100% convinced this is a good thing since I wonder if &#60;script&#62; tags are even supported by the internal browser<\/li>\n<li>Automatically loads as an icon in the system tray indicating that it's \"always running\".  I consider this a good thing since it will check feeds \"in the background\" without requiring a window in my task bar.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sharpreader.net\/\">SharpReader<\/a> 0.9.6.0 (last updated July 28, 2005): <\/h2>\n<p>Despite having a quick install that allowed icons\/menus to be placed only if I wanted them, SharpReader was a dismal failure for me.  It even imported my Proxy Server URL and port from my browser though it did not import my userame and password.  But after I finishing configuration of the proxy server manually, any attempt to connect brought up an error dialogue that said:  The type initializer for \"System.Net.HttpWebRequest\" threw an exception.  After attempting to fiddle with a couple options I gave up.  SharpReader was a non-starter for me.<\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>So there you have it.  My two-minute critique.  I'll keep RSSOwl and RSS Bandit around for a little while, and play with both as I get into some more advanced features like refresh intervals, etc.  If any readers have some good suggestions for a Windows RSS Reader that I should try out, please leave a comment to that effect.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I should mention:  Before using a RSS reader, I strictly used Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature for my web feeds.  It would be nice if either of RSSOwl or RSS Bandit could import all Live Bookmarks from my Firefox profile.  I notice that both do support importing from an OPML file, but I have no idea how I could convert my Live Bookmarks into an OPML file...<\/p>\n<div class=\"ads\"><object type=\"text\/html\" width=\"468\" height=\"60\" data=\"http:\/\/www.codedread.com\/gads.php\"><\/object><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I thought I&#8217;d try and step up my web-feed game by downloading a few &#8220;feed readers&#8221; and check them out. I did a search to try and find some good ones. Wikipedia has this page listing many, but it unfortunately it is light on details and (of course) does not provide a review-type information [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,11,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software","category-technology","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.codedread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}