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What is Your Favorite RSS Reader? 91

Posted by Cliff from the following-the-feeds dept.
Cyberhwk asks: "What is your favorite RSS reader? I've been trying to find a nice RSS reader. I am most intrested in an rss reader that can be run on OS X but I'm also intrested in Linux and Windows XP as well. I'm mostly interested in freeware because I'm currently going to college and I can't afford anything at the moment. So what do you use for an RSS reader? What does it run on? Most importantly is it free?"
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What is Your Favorite RSS Reader? More

What is Your Favorite RSS Reader?

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  • Safari as an RSS reader (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:07AM (#9671689) Homepage Journal
    Safari will have RSS reading built into it with MacOS 10.4. There's your Mac solution. =P

  • Safari 2.0 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Dylbert ( 139751 )
    Don't forget, next year when OSEX X.IV comes out, it will come with Safari 2.0, which includes an RSS reader [apple.com].

    Otherwise, there are plenty of projects on Sauceforge [sourceforge.net] and Virgintracker [versiontracker.com]. Go try some of them out.

  • Net News Wire (Score:4, Informative)

    by phUnBalanced ( 128965 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:10AM (#9671703) Homepage
    I've heard good things about Net News Wire [ranchero.com]. I believe there's a "Lite" free version.

    Not affiliated.

    • I have been using NetNewsWire Lite from the very start, and have found it to be an excellent program with a nice, clean interface. The Dock icon updates itself to show you how many unread articles you have, the built-in library of RSS-enabled sites is quite extensive, and one of the best features in my opinion is an option that opens the web-pages behind the NetNewsWire window. (I go through all the articles, opening browser windows as I go in the background, and then I go and read all the pages I brought u
    • I use NetNewsWire Lite, and it's pretty good. I set Safari to open links in New tabs, so all I have to do in NNWlite is to press the right arrow button on an article, and press "+" to jump to the next unread article.

      The only problem with NNWlite is that it does not recognize OPML groups. You have to recreate your groups if you're importing an OPML file.

      If you want a more advanced FREE (well, donationware) newsreader, NewsMac is a good choice.
      Here. [thinkmac.co.uk]

      I've tried RSSOwl (Java) but I didn't like it. On XP, I

  • Straw (Score:3, Informative)

    by Christ-on-a-bike ( 447560 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:11AM (#9671704)
    Straw is a very nice app for Linux (Gnome): website here [nongnu.org]... be careful about the dependencies when compiling it.

  • FireFox Nightly (Score:5, Informative)

    by Professor Cool Linux ( 759581 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:11AM (#9671705) Homepage
    I use Livemarks. Everyone not using FF Nightlys will see in 1.0. It makes an rss into a folder in your bookmarks...

    "RSS feed integration into Firefox... specifically:

    - when a page is encountered that has the
    link tag in the display an icon in the status bar that opens an Add
    Bookmark dialog to add the feed as a bookmark.
    - RSS Feed bookmarks behave like folders in that they can be opened, showing the
    posts as bookmarks underneath. They should be immutable folders however (cannot
    cut, delete from them, cannot insert into them, drag operations blocked).
    - the major RSS formats should be supported (1.0 RDF, 2.0 XML etc)

    A suggested approach is to decorate such bookmarks with a flag, e.g.
    LIVE_BOOKMARK="true" and when the bookmarks datasource is asked for children of
    that container, it can see that it's a live bookmark and fetch the content.
    Caching of results can be implemented if there are update problems.

    As a side note Live Bookmarks are the perfect use case of Scheduled Update
    Notifications... they are files that change often and there's a real value in
    having the icon change subtly or something similar when there's a new post. This
    should not be seen as a pre-requisite for the former however.

    I'm not likely to get to this for 1.0 so I'm looking for help to implement...
    this would be a great project for someone to get their feet wet in RDF/Bookmarks
    code."     -- Ben Goodger

    Source: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244078 #c1
    • Everyone not using FF Nightlys will see in 1.0

      Sweet, looking forward to it. This is exactly where an RSS reader should be IMO, built into the browser. Just as long as it doesn't add to bloat. :)

    • I just installed the Branch nightly and I must say, LiveLinks rocks. It needs a little more functionality (ability to create a new LiveLink and paste a feed URL would be great) but otherwise is very nice.

      For FireFox users, if you're using the Default theme, and see a lightning bolt, thats the livelinks.
  • It's probably not what you're looking for (it's not free, although there is a free ad-supported version for pretty much any OS), but I use Opera's M2 client.

    Since I use Opera for browsing and mail, it's a natural extension for me to use it as an RSS reader, too. I especially like the filtering, for grouping messages from different feeds (and email) into similiar views based on topics. I dislike having lots of extra apps open for basic things, so the integrated solution works well for me.
  • http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/tbar/takeatour.h tm

    actually, it's an IE toolbar. I installed it just for the reader, because I wanted one which scrolls vertically.

  • a web based service (Score:5, Informative)

    by Masa ( 74401 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:18AM (#9671735) Journal
    Bloglines [bloglines.com]

    It's a great reader. And always with me there, where I have an Internet connection.

    • Re:a web based service (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yandros ( 38911 )
      I used BlogLines and Safari, and I'm generally pleased with the results. I've tried some `dedicated' RSS feeds, but I find that I prefer the `in the browser' approach, since that's typically where I want to be reading such things...

    • Re:a web based service (Score:3, Informative)

      by Indomitus ( 578 )
      One of the big benefits of Bloglines is that since it's all off of one site, they only hit each site's feed once for everyone to read it. A lot of people have their individual readers setup to hit sites every few minutes which can lead to a lot of bandwidth wasted when you multiply that times hundreds or thousands of RSS readers. With one site doing the hitting, everybody reads the feed and the site doesn't have to worry about RSS readers killing their bandwidth every 5 minutes.
  • Liferea [sourceforge.net] has a clean gnome2 interface and supports atom.. I like it.

    I also use Forumzilla [mozdev.org] from Thunderbird. Opera [opera.com] supports rss directly in its mail client.

  • Yahoo (Score:4, Informative)

    by stu72 ( 96650 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:22AM (#9671759)
    I don't have a huge amount of experience w/RSS but I'd like to point out that you can now include RSS feeds in your "My Yahoo" page, along with the plethora of news/weather/stock quotes/etc that you set up - it works for me.

    http://e.my.yahoo.com/config/promo_content?.module =ycontent [yahoo.com]

    • Re:Yahoo (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 )
      In the same vein, I use LiveJournal [livejournal.com] as my RSS/Atom reader.
      • Likewise. Though if you want to add a RSS/Atom feed that doesn't already exist on LJ, you need to be a paid or permanent member. Though you can just spend five bucks for two months of membership, add all the feeds you want that aren't already there, and read them for free from then on out.

        I recommend JWZ's cheesegrater [jwz.org] for scraping RSS feeds out of sites that fail to provide one.
        • Likewise. Though if you want to add a RSS/Atom feed that doesn't already exist on LJ, you need to be a paid or permanent member.

          Or just get someone who is paid to make the feed and then you can add it for free..
    • Seconded. It's far from perfect, but it's good enough for what I use it for.
  • I use Shrook [fondantfancies.com]. It's not free, but the reason I chose it over NetNewsWire is that it does distributed checking. You can also run multiple copies on different machines and they'll keep in sync automatically.

  • Pulp Fiction (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tweder ( 22759 ) <stwede@gmai l . c om> on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:32AM (#9671802) Homepage
    I prefer Freshly Squeezed Software's Pulp Fiction [freshsqueeze.com].

    It's got an interface similar to Mail, and also features a built-in browser (via WebKit) so you needn't leave the application to post comments on people's blogs.

    It's not free, but you should be able to scrounge up $25 right?
  • FeedReader [feedreader.com] is my current favorite. Open souce and light, no .NET overhead.
    I have tried RSSOwl [sourceforge.net] Open source, cross-platform, so OSX also, but Java, so a little topheavy;
    There's also Abilon [abilon.org], Pluck [pluck.com] (both are Non-Open Source, but free).

    I've yeat to find one with all the features I like, but Feedreader has been working for me quite well.

  • Mozilla Firefox & Sage Extension (Score:5, Informative)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:36AM (#9671823)
    Both work really well for me!

  • Bloglines (Score:4, Informative)

    by sitcoman ( 161336 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:39AM (#9671837)
    Bloglines.com [bloglines.com] is a great RSS aggregation service, which handles as many RSS feed as you want, lets you sort and search them, and makes it really easy (compared to others [newsisfree.com]) to add any feed you find on the Net. It's free and of course it's available on any OS. It also means that you never miss an update when you're away from your home PC.

    And as a cherry on top, they have apps for all 3 major OS's that work with the website to notify you of updates when you're not using your browser. I don't personally use these helper apps though, so I can't vouch for them.

    In summation: you should check it out, it's great!

    • Re:Bloglines (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gudlyf ( 544445 )
      I second that. Another amazing feature Bloglines has is email feeds. This allows you to have emails (say, newsletters or mailing lists) sent to a special address that bloglines assigns you (username21345@bloglines.com). You can't reply to those emails with Bloglines, so it's really just to receive email.

      Bloglines really is a fantastic service. I just hope they stick around, as all of this is free and I have to imagine it costs money to run it.

  • Slashdock! (Score:4, Informative)

    by millia ( 35740 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @12:53AM (#9671893) Homepage
    No, that's no typo. Slashdock [mac.com] is a dock-based RSS grabber. Works pretty darn good, author is helpful, and is very unobtrusive (or obtrusive, if you want it to be.) Used in conjunction with Camino, it makes for highly efficient browsing.
    Highly recommended.
  • For OS X, I recommend NetNewsWire Lite [ranchero.com], which is free-as-in-beer and very functional.
  • but I can give my thumbs up towards Liferea [sourceforge.net] on Linux. Straw [nongnu.org] is also good if for some reason Liferea isn't to your liking.

    I found a nice Windows reader called rssbandit [rssbandit.org] that I setup for a few people while doing Windows installs recently. They seemed to like it.

    I have no experience with OS/X, so I can't put a vote towards anything there. The Linux apps are gtk based and the Windows app is a dotNet programmed app.

  • RSS Bandit (Score:5, Informative)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @01:02AM (#9671925) Homepage Journal
    RSS Bandit [rssbandit.org] is good, I switched to it from SharpReader [moskalyuk.com] some time ago and never went back.
  • http://bloglines.com/ Online, free and simple.
  • Free version of NetNewsWire [ranchero.com] is perfect for me, easy to organize subscriptions and fish through headlines quickly. See the link at the bottom for the free version.

  • Check out Sage or Sharpreader (Score:3, Informative)

    by nocent ( 71113 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @01:26AM (#9672040)
    Sage [mozdev.org] is an RSS reader extension for Mozilla Firefox. It doesn't aggregate and combine multiple feeds but it works well within Firefox.

    For Windows XP, Sharpreader [sharpreader.net] is a good free aggregator. It can get slow if you have hundreds of feeds.

  • I wrote Plucky and it works the way I think an RSS reader should. You can customize it and add RSS feeds easily.

    Plucky [geoffreygrosenbach.com]

  • I always liked making a Mozilla Sidebar RSS from The One Ring. [theonering.net] It should work with all versions of Mozilla/Firefox, and its rather painless.
  • We put in an irc bot in an rss channel, that makes short url's. Its just spits out short url's, and it announces new rss news. Just click on the RSS news link in xirc and it opens up in mozilla.

    I think part of the problem is people would post the same URL's for news all day, and everyone was saying "OLD NEWS". Rather annoying when people work 8-12 hours a day, its new News to them.

    Lots of uses for IRC other than chat.

  • Planet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kris ( 824 ) <kris-slashdot@koehntopp.de> on Monday July 12, 2004 @02:13AM (#9672211) Homepage
    For the blogs I am reading, I am using a copy of Planet [planetplanet.org]. While this is not a real RSS reader, it generates a nice slashdot like page from all the blogs I am interested in.

  • On my Palm: JPluck (Score:2, Informative)

    by Jon_Aquino ( 672820 )
    JPluck's great for scraping websites and RSS/Atom feeds onto a Palm on a scheduled basis.
  • Excellent text mode (TUI) RSS reader, free, open source, customizable key bindings, customizable browser. I use it on both linux and OS X. For Panther, you can get it from Darwinports.

    Text mode reduces distraction, and let you focus on the content. That's a major point of RSS, isn't it?

    Nobody has mentioned it yet, I'll have to sacrifice the mod point for this thread.
  • http://www.rssreader.com/

    It's free and for Windows. Pretty sweet and simple.
  • For Windows I highly recommend SharpReader [sharpreader.net]. It's freeware (though not open source) and it works great, easy to use, etc. You can also set it to give you little notifications on new items. Check it out.

  • I use BottomFeeder [cincomsmalltalk.com]. I've used it on Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows, but it also works on Mac OS X, Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, etc. I've found it to be more robust than SharpReader (SharpReader once gave me threadpool errors while updating my 50+ feeds, on dialup). I've yet to use a news aggregator on Linux/FreeBSD that has as many features as BottomFeeder.

  • Written by J. Gosling no less! Java, portable, has a text to speech output option anda UI that reacts gracefully to being resized and changed in horizontal or vertical orientation.

    https://jnn.dev.java.net
  • I use a combination of blosxom [blosxom.com], which I also use to write my blog [drbeat.li], and blagg [oreillynet.com], which reads my feeds and generates blog entries of the new entries in a separate "news" category [drbeat.li]. In fact, I have replaced blagg with a rewrite in Python that I call (obviously) plagg, but I haven't done its web page yet, so stay tuned...
  • I use Livejournal. It can act as a feed consumer as well as a producer (both for RSS and Atom).

    Any syndicated account behaves just like a normal account, so I get my syndicated people at :
    http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/syn peo ple/
    my comics at:
    http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/c omics /
    and my news at:
    http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/n ews/

    And I can access these from any web connection.

  • Opera (Score:4, Informative)

    by NaDrew ( 561847 ) <nadrew@gmail.com> on Monday July 12, 2004 @03:49AM (#9672536) Journal
    The Opera [opera.com] browser now includes [opera.com] an RSS reader integrated with the M2 mail client.
    Subscribing to newsfeeds with Opera Mail is extremely simple, as most newsfeeds will automatically be subscribed when you click their links on a Web page. The feed will show up under "Newsfeeds" at the bottom of your "Mail" panel. Newsfeed items are presented and handled in the same manner as e-mail messages and Usenet news articles. This makes it easy to forward a newsfeed item by e-mail to a friend, access stored items using the search and "Quick find features", label particular items for later follow-up, and so forth.
    No need for a separate app. To subscribe to "Ask Slashdot", for example, just click this link [slashdot.org] (copied from the bottom of this page) and Opera's RSS reader will auto-discover the feed and add it to your list.
  • I'm surprised no one has mentioned OmniWeb. It's a lovely, very Mac-like, RSS-built-right-in browser for OS X. I use it exclusively. :D

    OmniGroup [omnigroup.com]
  • I made my own. Sort of ... If your a developer (maybe even if your not ..) lastRss [webdot.cz] offers a single class that retrieves and parses all the various RSS standards and is relatively quick too. I expanded on an example provided [webdot.cz] on their website, Id link to it by my host is (still) down :( As soon as Opera/Firefox/Thunderbird can provide more options for their current usenet/rss features, I wont need to keep looking for seperate programs ...
  • Amphetadesk [disobey.com] - this product seems to be in hiatus at the moment, but it works nicely, is open-source, and runs on every platform tha runs perl

    Combined with AmphetaOutlines [decafbad.com] it is really powerfull.

  • If anyone knows a free Java midlet RSS Reader which works with Nokia Series 40 phones, please tell me! Something like RSS Orbit [blogplanet.net], but freeware/open source!

  • Bloglines (Score:2, Informative)

    by xyrw ( 609810 ) *

    Bloglines [bloglines.com] has a web-based interface, but makes sense if you will be using several different computers at different times. Unless RSS feeds develop an IMAP-like protocol, I will not be willing to download all my 100+ subscriptions once for every computer I use.

    You may not appreciate using a web interface, but give it a try. In short, the benefits are:

    • Automatically synchronized subscription list
    • Consistent interface on all platforms
    • Availability on any platform with a web browser
    • Easy keyword searching fo
  • A very simple RSS (both RDF and XML) stream reader. eRSS [enlightenment.org] is simple to set up, and allows for tweaking the settings of each stream you want on your desktop [enlightenment.org] (see the three in the lower right, and one bottom center).
  • rss2email [aaronsw.com] is my favorite. It may seem counterintuitive to send rss to your email client but you'd be surprised how useful it is to use a single interface for managing email and newsfeeds. I use rss2email with a combination of Eudora / Squirrelmail / gmail for my personal mail.

    • Yep, having an IMAP box that you can read from any number of different places sure beats having to figure out which feed entries you've already seen.

      I was using the Info Aggregator [blogstreet.com] until I decided I'd rather do it myself.

      IMAP for RSS is the only way to go.

  • http://feedreader.sf.net Its currently not being developed anymore, but its still a client that just does its job.
  • Trillian Pro [trillian.cc], it also handles Instant Messaging.
  • It's a very nice sidebar. You can find it here [mozdev.org]. Basically, you bookmark your rss feeds in a specific folder, and Sage reads from that folder. I don't know if it can "discover" new feeds or not. (my guess is no, but i'll probably be corrected here if need be)
  • Not only will it read RSS for you, but it will rank the articles it thinks you will like. read4me [sf.net]
  • zfeeder [sourceforge.net] is what I use. It's a php app for a web server. The big advantage is that you don't need anything installed on a client machine, so you can get your feeds pretty much anywhere.
  • It seems like everyone's writing their own RSS reader from scratch now-a-days. There's not much to 'em.

  • Feed Demon (Score:2, Informative)

    by rangerx ( 131113 )
    http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/index.asp

    rss and atom support.
    newspaper view (although I hate this mode)
    opml supoprt
    performs decently with badly formatted feeds
    small and fast

  • aKregator (Score:2, Informative)

    by jmontano ( 97793 )
    Runs on Kde its pretty fast and customizable
    Akregator [sf.net]

  • NewsMac (Score:3, Informative)

    by Naum ( 166466 ) on Monday July 12, 2004 @01:58PM (#9676887) Homepage Journal
    NewsMac [thinkmac.co.uk]

    For Mac OS X.

    Free. Though please send a donation in support if you like it.

  • I like nntprss [methodize.org] , which acts like a RSS to NNTP (news) gateway. You can use your favorite newsreader (I use Mozilla) to read RSS feeds. And it's written in Java so it's cross-platform.
  • NetNewsWire 2.0 is in the works, and it will have a corresponding Lite version that's freeware. I've been part of the alpha/beta-testing group, and believe you me, it'll blow your socks off. Brent's been working VERY hard on making this a dynamic app. Scan his blog at inessential.com [inessential.com] for what he's made public ...
  • Because it parses HTML as well as RSS and Atom, kinja [kinja.com] is quite good as an online rss/blog accumulator.
  • I use FeedDemon from Nick Bradbury [bradsoft.com], the small developer behind the original Homesite. I never bought Homesite a while back so I was happy to support FeedDemon. This guy puts out superior software without bloat and with excellent UI. I think it's worth supporting developers like that.
  • RSS feeds, in your taskbar! Heaven, I tells ya :)
  • I have RSS as a line just below the IRC channel topic in my IRC-client (irssi), with the newsline.pl extension. It's wonderful.

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