Missing pieces

As I mainly use FreeBSD, two of these programs don't work with Windows at all. Though Google finds few reviews for you, if you want to find more readers that work in Windows. But for the rest of us, here's review of few free RSS readers. And if you're wondering what RSS is, I wrote post about it some time ago.

This is not going to be comprehensive list of all readers, I have left some readers out that didn't seem to have features I want, so I haven't even tried them out. I use keyboard heavily and go through number of feeds daily, so that affects reviews too.

Let's start with the integrated readers

Opera

Operas implementation is extension to the integrated M2 mail client, though there's separate menu for feeds now. That's about only feature that isn't used in reading mails too.

It's possible to sort feeds to different categories via mail filters, but that's lot of work. Though I must admit, it's quite flexible solution once its working. Keyboard navigation works nicely, though accessing mail filters through panel is not as easy as it could be, but that's the price to pay for multipurpose panel. So the actual downside is that there's no way to render feeds as a page, only way is to browse one item at a time.

Opera Mini has already that feature (though it's only way that doing it makes sense with mobile phone), so maybe there's hope for Operas feed reader in the future. Opera is still great for less frequently updated feeds.

Browser and feed reader go so well together, but once the flood of new feed items really starts, there has to be some way to skim through the items more quickly. So, as a feed reader it has room for improvement and that was why I started looking for other choices.

Firefox

I would guess that Firefox has most widely used feed reader among Linux users. Though its default implementation is bit odd. It shows feed items as bookmarks and calls then Live Bookmarks. I'm not so happy with that kind of implementation as I don't want to miss anything. In addition, it's not possible to mark items as read, though at least it's possible to open all items at once. I'm sure almost everything is possible with add-ons and I think I have seen feed reader add-ons.

That's not the best part though. Firefox lets you choose to subscribe with any program and has web services as Google Reader in the list too. In addition, it shows preview of the feed and that's handy as sometimes it's hard to guess what's included in the feed without subscribing to it.

Default reader might not be good enough for everybody, but at least Firefox makes it easy to use any other reader.

Akregator

Akregator is the official KDE feed reader. So no Windows version right now, but that might change. It embeds Konqueror, so some of its features work when rendering feeds as a page, namely shortcut keys for links (press ctrl to see them). Too bad shortcut keys for links run out quickly. Another thing that is missing is shortcut for selecting next folder with unread items

Categories work as they should. Drag and drop works and arranging feeds to categories doesn't take much time. Even subfolders are possible, so there's not really complaints about that. Only nitpicking could be that it's not possible to add tags to feeds, but right now I'm happy with working categories.

Most annoying feature is that by default Akregator switches mode to all messages, so browsing feeds takes some time as rendering page with many items takes some time. And there's no way to tell which items are unread, so only way is to swithch back to mode that shows unread items. Though there is option (look under advanced in Akregators preferences) that prevents Akregator from resetting the mode each time feed is changed, so it's much faster to browse feeds when it shows always just unread items.

Akregator has tabbed interface, so if you want to read the actual articles straight from Akregator (with the embedded Konqueror), it's possible in separate tab.

As for default feeds (that seem to be mandatory feature for separate RSS feed reader), Akregator has some KDE and Akregator related feeds.

Liferea

Liferea seems to be featurewise good reader. It has easy way to categorise feeds and can render the feeds as a page and has support for two different rendering engines (GTKHTML and Gecko if you're interested in technical details). Only thing I'm missing is way to open links with keyboard, other shortcuts seem to be available.

When rendering feeds as page, feed items are bit more stylized than for example in Akregator. Every item has feeds logo in item headline, so when browsing multiple feeds simultaneously, it's easy to see which feed the item is from.

Though there are some flaws. I didn't see any way to display only unread items. Maybe rendering page with 100 items take that long with faster computer, but with slower it clearly hurts. But at least read items are clearly marked in rendered page too.

I prefer Akregator bit more right now, but Liferea doesn't seem to be bad choice, though I got it to crash once. It didn't see be tolerant for my impatience and decided to quit when it received too many commands that it had no time to fulfill. Though it might not happen to you, I'm not even sure if I can make it happen again.

Liferea has some Linux and open source related feeds as default feeds, which is not bad choice to get you addicted.

RSSOwl

RSSOwl is feed reader written in Java. It works with Windows too. As for features, it seems to be serious about them. I'm not sure if I'm able to spot every single one. I managed to get it to render feeds as page and display it in external browser (if you want to read feeds from PDF file, that's possible too). I didn't get embedded browser to work as I don't have Mozilla installed and Firefox didn't work. Windows users can use Internet Explorer.

One of the features is autodetecting feeds from web page, it even has separate feed search. I'm not sure how it works, but I managed to find few feeds with it.

One interesting feature that I didn't try out is AmphetaRate integration. It's service that lets you rate feed items and then tries to give you better articles based on your taste.

There seems to be keyboard for most important functions, though few of them are not defined by default.

By default it has huge amount of feeds. Keeping up to date with every single one of them could take some time.

For managing so many feeds, it's nice to be able to update just one folder. It took some time to realise, that it's named "reload favorites". I guess I had made that category favorite earlier.

There seems to be something going on with these favorites. It seems like that it's possible to dump every possible feed in RSSOwl and then mark favorites and keep reading those. Default actions seem to support that conclusion, no feeds are updated automatically, but it's possible to make RSSOwl do that for some feeds in addition to all favorite feeds.

RSSOwl seems to be good enough reader, though problems with embedded browser don't make it attractive alternative right now and U'm too lazy to fix it right now. Though using Opera to render the page is interesting idea.

Some kind of conclusion

I can't say this is completely fair review, as I have mainly been using Akregator now and I know more about its quirks (and of course Operas). Your way of using RSS feed reader might be completely different. Browsers are good at integration, they're already available if you're using that particular browser, so it's easy to start using them. Though separate readers are more ambitious. All three separate readers seem to be trying to be the best reader around. Akregator seems to get the most important things right, but Liferea displays rendered feed page nicer. RSSOwl tries really to be stand alone reader which doesn't need help from browser for subscribing to feeds.

Feeds are useful in other programs too. For example Amarok can get podcasts from RSS feeds. And there should be some programs to download TV shows, for example PenguinTV.

Looks like my 50th post will be little bit different after all. Sorry, no any useful information this time, I just have been tagged by DrLaunch. So blame him for lack of substance this time

So what is this tagging plague? I have no idea where it really started, I can't even find where this started at Opera Community. Tagging means in this case that I will have to tell five less known facts about me and tag three people.

And when you tag, it's good idea to send message to people you have tagged, otherwise they'll never know that you have tagged them.

1. I like to take a walk in windy and snowy weather.

2. I have never owned a game console.

3. I have never really played multiplayer games after I got broadband connection.

4. I have not used Windows for about a year now (I can't remember exact date), just few short sessions with someone elses computer.

5. I never really listen to regular radio anymore. I have MP3-player in car and I don't bother to tune in at home, I just listen to Internet radio now and then.

And then three unlucky ones who might appreciate some extra attention:

Edijus
Kaktusgartens
Joymeng

Not a long time ago, there was guy who was asking for a free IDE (Integrated Development Environment). There were some suggestions to get one from P2P network, but that's simply not necessary. Even Windows has some free tools.

I haven't tried these myself, but at least I can point you in right direction. And you can always demand your money back if they don't work.

Dev-C++ seems to be one of the open source IDEs, so if it's not good enough, you can always modify it.

Code::Blocks is another open source IDE. Some say that it's better than Dev-C++.

Microsoft has Visual Studio Express editions. They shouldn't be badly crippled, according to Microsoft they are just streamlined for hobbyists. Which means that some features are removed, but they're still worth using.

If you don't already have .NET environment, you could have few hundrend megabytes worth of downloading. But it's all about what you already have and what you want to install.

Last one is that was one of tools that I learned programming with. Borlands Turbo IDEs. But as far as I know, free versions have one limitation. You can't use additional libraries, you'll have to stick with what's already included. You don't need your credit card to start programming.

Maybe none of these are good enough for professional use, but in that case money shouldn't be a problem. But for hobbyists, these make things much easier.