Now and then I pause from cruising effortlessly through my RSS feeds displayed in SharpReader, “Surely I am missing something. There are at least 5 other RSS readers to check out.” I poke around for a bit with an app or two and find myself right back using Sharpreader in a few days.
Why?
Because SharpReader presents the data just like your favorite email application does. Because there is nothing about RSS content that requires a new user interface. An email message and an RSS item both (almost always) have at least: Author, Subject, Date, Body. Not only that, but RSS content is periodic. It trickles in from various sources just like email depending on how frequently you query the source(s) for new data.
Proof of this content similarity can be found in everyone’s beloved Thunderbird mail, news, and RSS client. Unfortunately, the RSS feed handling in Thunderbird leaves a lot to be desired (see below). At least someone on the team gets it though.
There’s a reason Thunderbird has handled “netnews” (usenet) for ages, too: It’s the same damn concept. Author, Subject, Body, Date. Who cares that the data came from a news server and not from a mail server? Do we need a whole new application and user interface model because the data came from a different source. No sir, we do not.
An Aside
So, now that I’ve ragged on Thunderbird, let me explain what’s wrong with it: There’s no aggregation, the singlemost important thing to make RSS reading painless, just like email. Clicking my account name (”RSS Feeds” in the case of my image example) should display all new RSS items in the traditional message index, just like an email inbox. Instead, you’re left to dig into each RSS feed listing to display its few items at a time.
I’m sure plenty of you with different methods of interaction will disagree. I’ll never agree with more clicking around being better. I’d settle for an option in Thunderbird to do the aggregation.
PS: I also love the ability to purge SharpReader of read news items. They’re not email messages needing replies or careful perusal. They’re RSS blurbs. Shift-Delete completely erases (not just marks as read) all of the RSS news cache being used by the app leaving the user with a completely blank message index pane.
One Comment
Seems to me aggregation should be a simple thing to add to any RSS reader and necessary. I appreciate aggregation for another reason. Many times “news” is reported by more than one feed. I like to ignore duplicates.