RSSBandit thoughts

As I mentioned earlier, I've decided to switch to RSS Bandit because my old aggregator self-destructed on an upgrade.  I wasted an entire day on it and would rather waste my time other ways.

  • Reading may be a little faster, particularly with me getting comfortable with scrolling through the newspaper view, instead of individual items.  I still haven't decided which I like better.
  • "Next unread item" means the oldest unread item, rather than the youngest.  This seems to run counter to most of the aggregators, which present the newest unread item.  Interestingly, the "newspaper" view shows items in reverse chronological order.
  • Space bar goes to "next unread," rather than doing a "scroll" in the current reading pane window when viewing in newspaper mode.  If the reading pane has focus, it will scroll there.  When reading a single post, it does scroll as expected.
  • RSS Bandit is much more sensitive to errors in the feeds - more accurately, it tells me that there are errors in some feeds.  They provide a "feed error" folder that lists problems as they arise.  But I see that the feeds it has trouble with work fine elsewhere.  Not good.
  • I can't get the full text on excerpt-only feeds.  This is probably the biggest loss of moving from the old reader.
  • I like the newspaper view, when I select a folder (they call them "categories").  Articles are listed in descending order, but are grouped by feed.  I don't quite understand how the feeds are sorted (it's not by the feed with the most recent article is at the top.)  This is a handy mode for reading unread stuff once or twice a day.
  • RSS Bandit is a stand-alone application, but it uses the Internet Explorer engine to render HTML and XSLT.  By default, it opens links in tabs within the app.  You can also have it open links in the default browser.  I like the tabs in the application.  Now I need to find out if there are keyboard shortcuts for navigating the tabs.
  • The BlogJet This plug-in works in the reading windows.  But the BlogJet This plug-in for IE does not work in the tabs that open within RSS Bandit.
  • RSS Bandit, as other stand-alone aggregators, lets me customize a whole category or individual feeds for the update frequency and a few other aspects.  However,
  • Email this only emails the URL of the post.  I'd rather it give the entire text (HTML) of the item (along with the URL). 

That's enough for now.  I'm sure I'll have more thoughts later.  Maybe I'll switch again.

6 Comment(s)

Fred said:

Hello Mr. Vinson,

I downloaded RSSBandit some months ago. I played with it some minutes and uninstalled it. In my humble opinion, there are better free standalone rss readers available on the Internet. Personally, the best standalone rss reader I found and used is Omea Reader. His only drawback is the system resources he takes (comparable to Outlook). I started to use Bloglines a month ago. It is a joy to use it with the little Notifier application. Why? Because it opens a resource less application called IE, and it is simple and reliable. Given my lack of computer resources here (an old laptop) it better fill my needs for now.

Salutations,


Fred

jackvinson Author Profile Page said:

Thanks, Fred and Tris. My problem with Bloglines (which I really appreciate) is that I can't use it when I am away from a network connection.

I too looked at Omea Reader, but it just didn't seem to work for me. Maybe it was an older version? RSSBandit has been updated as well.

And when I tested Lektora many months ago, the style was so completely different to what I was expecting. Maybe I should check that again as well. Though I see the free version will include advertising.

I made the change out of LOTS of anger over my old aggregator screwing up their upgrade very badly. I really like the threading feature of RSS Bandit, which is keeping me there for now. Of course, if I find that it isn't so interesting, I'll look at others.

» Related by RSS from Library clips

I just noticed that Waypath can allow you to display related posts from the blogosphere at the end of every post in your blog. I noticed this on a post from Knowledge Jolt with Jack where one of my posts was included in the related posts …there... Read More

Zephiron said:

validated RSS's like http://www.htk.com.br/rss.php work perfectly, but rss's like http://technology.blogniscient.com/tech_main.xml keep giving me problems with wrong chars, I hope they "fix" it by letting non 100% working xmls to show.

Leave a comment


About this Entry

This entry was published on July 3, 2005 11:22 PM and has 6 comment(s).

Trackback

Categories:

Related Entries

Previous entry: The Worst Thing About Best Practices

Next entry: Upcoming KM Chicago: Plug-n-Play KM

Find recent content on the main index, explore the full tag cloud, or look in the archives to find all content.

Powered by Movable Type 4.21-en
Picture a steaming coffee cup. Better yet, grab one and have a read!

KJolt Memberships

Blogarama - The Blog Directory