If you’re wonder where part one is, it’s here. Today (note: I think this was friday) I tried NewsFire a little bit more and found some addtional things that keep me from purchasing it:
- No AppleScript support (so I can’t export my subscription to OPML from within a script)
- No subgroups
I still find the sidebar animations great so I’m still considering purchasing it. I’ve also started to try NetNewsWire now which also comes with good enclosure support and also its OPML import support seems to work as you would expect it. But somehow … it doesn’t feel right to me. The GUI is for my taste for a news reader way too stuffed with things I don’t need by default. Paying just for a working OPML and enclosure support? Perhaps, but then I’d have to feel comfortable with the whole application, which somehow simply isn’t the case for me with NetNewsWire. NewsFire would give me that feeling but doesn’t offer me anything really interesting except a fancy GUI :-?
But NetNewsWire definitely offers way more than the Podcasting working OPML support. It actually offers quite a lot of functionality around enclosures. Up to some degree it even offers a sidebar similiar to NewsFire’s. Not as stylish and not as advanced but still, it has it.
… If you’ve noticed a slight inconstancy my opinion within the last two paragraphs, it’s because this post was written on multiple days and every day I tried the mentioned readers more and more. So during my Saturday testing I still felt most at home with NewsFire. At least during the day. At night while continuing to write this post I noticed, that most of the problems I had during the day with NetNewsWire might have been caused by a simple misunderstanding of how the whole things works. For example the sidebar: Sometimes I see an ordering effect similiar to NewsFire’s but sometimes, when I would expect it, it doesn’t appear. Another problem I have with NNN is, that there is no real notification about new items. Sure, you see the number of unread items in the Dock, but some jumping symbol or at least growl integration would be nice. ViennaRSS on the hand has growl support while NewsFire does the Dock-jumping-thing.
Anyway: I will now try to end this whole inconistency by simply getting some sleeping and continuing to think about news readers in another topic ;) For now I have to say, that any of these readers might work for me in the end.
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Alternatively, this website also supports Webmentions. If you write a post on a blog that supports this technique, I should get notified about your link 🙂