Comments on: FeedDemon: Replacing Google Reader?

By: New Feed for Shared Items at Not So Relevant

New Feed for Shared Items at Not So Relevant — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:18:46 +0000

[...] some of you might remember that I am quite impressed with FeedDemon and I am using it as my main feed reader for a while now. It’s great! I read [...]

By: Carsten PÃ¶tter

Carsten PÃ¶tter — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:16:05 +0000

Surprisingly I managed to set it up for Ma.gnolia. Works well!

By: Carsten PÃ¶tter

Carsten PÃ¶tter — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:56:00 +0000

Ok, I will have a look at it. Thanks for this tip!

By: Nick Bradbury

Nick Bradbury — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:10:44 +0000

@Carsten: If you don’t mind a bit of geekery, you can add a lot of different services to the “Send To” menu. That menu is built from the XML files contained in FeedDemon’s \Data\SendTo subfolder. I don’t know much about Ma.gnolia, but you might be able to copy the digg.xml or delicious.xml file in that folder and adapt it for Ma.gnolia.

By: Carsten PÃ¶tter

Carsten PÃ¶tter — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:22:44 +0000

OK, I see.

Another question: is it possible to expand the ‘Send To’ menu to more than del.icio.us and Digg? Would be nice if there were more options available or if users could add new services themselves which is preferable, I guess. I want Ma.gnolia.

By: Nick Bradbury

Nick Bradbury — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:39:43 +0000

@Carsten: I’ve seen a few other aggregators mark items read as you scroll the page, but quite honestly, I really dislike this idea. To me, the fact that I’ve scrolled an article doesn’t mean I’ve read it - it may simply mean that I’m scrolling to an article beneath. But of course, my dislike can be overruled if enough people ask for this feature

APML import will definitely appear in the future. The eventual goal is to enable importing not only your list of feeds, but also each feed’s relative importance to you. And for the record, we want to do this in a way that works across different aggregators (including ones that compete with our own).

@Frank: I’m glad to hear that you’re impressed with FeedDemon! I know the UI is quite different from online aggregators, but I think if you give it some time, you’ll find it provides a much more intuitive way to read your feeds (especially if you have a ton of them and you want to quickly scan through them).

By: Frank Hamm

Frank Hamm — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:19:02 +0000

Hi Carsten, I’m trying FeedDemon too. The main reason I used Bloglines was that I’m rss reading on several different computers. With synchronizing I get the full potential of a rich client software.

So far FeedDemon is quite impressive. I just have to get used to the different ways FeedDemon does the management and to the UI.

By: Carsten PÃ¶tter

Carsten PÃ¶tter — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:37:52 +0000

Nick, I’m not quite sure if I want the middle pane to be visible or not. It’s nice to have some kind of calendar for certain feeds. On the other hand you’re right of course, there’s much more space for articles if it’s hidden.

What I’d like to see, though, is marking posts read when scrolling down. Also will it be possible to import APML files someday? This would help people who don’t have an OPML file or don’t want to add feeds manually to discover feeds they might be interested in.

By: Nick Bradbury

Nick Bradbury — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:19:03 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to post such a thorough review, Carsten!

One tip I’d like to suggest (which you can feel free to ignore): just leave the middle “news item list” pane hidden. Not only will this give you more space for reading the newspaper, but I think you’ll find it a better way to quickly scan through your unread items (especially when used in conjunction with the “Next” toolbutton, which marks the page as read and moves to the next page).