The prefect RSS-Reader

[be4truth]

There are quite a couple of RSS-readers available and like in all software applications they differ in features and functionality.

I tried to use a least 7 of them and came to know that functionality differs greatly. It would be interested to know which key functions Ubuntu users need so that the developers don't waste their time in programming stuff that's no really required or wanted.

Let's go for it!

What key-functions/features do you need in your rss-feeder? Please be short and precise as developers might not want to get involved into novels....

[argie]

Need:
1. Handling duplicates, must discard duplicates in the same feed. Also must mark a duplicate read if its in another feed (like the linux.com and newsforge feeds, liferea does this)

2. Allow notifications on some feeds but not on others. So a little notification appears if a particular feed is updated, but if another feed is updated the notification does not appear. I want this because I have the BBC feed and it updates all the time with the same thing (Iraqi blogs)

Would like:
1. The ability to output a combined feed, sort of like the Planet aggregator does, except straight off my application.

2. When it's a blog post or something, some readers (liferea, for example) will get and display comments in a little box within the feed preview. I like that and wish it could be pushed into a plugin style thing so that more feeds can be supported.

PS: You live in Auroville? Nice.

[ssam]

i am pretty happy with liferea

it would be nice to be able to disable flash.

[nickburns]

1. Needs to pay MP3,
2. Have different values for each feed of the historical data to keep.
3. Good search features.

[Dark Hornet]

For what I do...Google Reader fits the bill nicely. It is able to handle as many feeds as I need, and will play mp3 podcasts, etc as well.

[Techwiz]

Some filters (like; by how many new ones each RSS can download at a time (Google news gave me about 20 every 5 minutes) or filter by words)

[bruce89]

i am pretty happy with liferea

it would be nice to be able to disable flash.


1. Needs to pay MP3,
2. Have different values for each feed of the historical data to keep.
3. Good search features.

I wish Liferea didn't have XSPF (flash thing) to play audio, it's crap. I wish they used some normal gstreamer thing.

[be4truth]

*good Firefox integration,
*remove duplicate news,
*possibility to mark important news and prevent them from being expired
*normal download interface working in the preview as well as the full view
*defining what clicks do is handy (left, middle and right click
*background tab loading via middle click on slow internet connection helps a lot browsing through lots of news headlines and open them in the background
*easy choice to open a news in a tab or external browser

[hhhhhx]

google reader :)

[Chibi-Tatsu]

You know, I started making a list, then realized that a lot of the features I like are found in my current reader, Liferea. But then there are some things I would like to see in it in the future. So take the below as referencing Liferea as it currently is:

* not just global and individual feed update settings but folder settings too. That way I can just drop a feed in without having to worry about that issue.
* When a feed is added, I want to be able to immediately change the name and select the hierarchical location. While the current setup is nice for minimization of clicks, I ALWAYS have to go in to properties to edit the name and then drag it down folders until it's in the right spot. This is a pain especially for author pages, since I've got hundreds of them categorized by site->first letter of author's name->author's name.
* The 'unread' folder in Liferea is nice. But it'd be nice if the articles that showed up there had some kind of label that let me know what feed they came from...
* The built-in browser is nice; it allows me to read a news article without opening up a browser window. But it's a little irritating to open up an archive and it drops through a browser and THEN saves to desktop, or a torrent file and have the same thing happen before it hits my torrent application. In short, if it's a non-HTML file, I want it handled without my browser entering the picture.
* For some reason, Liferea doesn't get certain kinds of updates. For example, there is a story site called "fanfiction.net". The stories are in atom feeds, and Liferea detects when new stories are written. But it doesn't detect if there are any changes (ie, new chapters). It's kind of obnoxious, since that's what those story feeds are there for; watching for new chapters.

If the above could be fixed, Liferea would be quite perfect for me, I think. I don't need a relational database (like Epiphany's bookmarks), since my feeds are strictly hierarchical, and I don't care too much about flash or audio.

[bluelightav]

After experimenting with a number of rss feeder in form of application and plug-ins I found Brief (Firefox plug-in) is an easy RSS feeder with options for synchronisation. In combination with Foxmarks (bookmarks synchronisation) this brings the mobility to use it on different computers and the fast access to the actual feeds as it is integrated into Firefox.
this RSS feeder is easy to use and suitable for beginners as much as for advanced users.

[niclake13]

To be honest, the only thing that I feel is missing from Ubuntu readers is the ability to synchronize with other services (particularly Google Reader). If Liferea could include that, life would be super.

[Tibuda]

To be honest, the only thing that I feel is missing from Ubuntu readers is the ability to synchronize with other services (particularly Google Reader). If Liferea could include that, life would be super.

Liferea > Subscriptions > New source > Google reader

[bornagainpenguin]

The number one feature I'm looking for at the moment is true offline capability. That means pictures should display along with the text without requiring an active internet connection. It'd be nice if this could be tweaked so that if the post was a link to a youtube video the "paused video" picture could be snagged and saved for offline display as well, but this is a bonus, not a must. The big thing is to be able to read my feeds, images and all without requiring an internet connection.

Oh and for pity's sake don't waste my time adding podcasts, video or audio support to the application! This is Linux, isn't it? We're supposed to come from a tradition of small applications doing one job and doing it well--right? So stop trying to incorporate everything into one app, okay?

I have an audio player, it grabs and plays back my podcasts just fine. I have an internet video player--it can grab those videos for me too, just as well as it always has (although I am getting a little frustrated with their attempts to add audio podcasting to their app as well as video...one thing and do it well--why is this so hard?) I don't need and don't want yet another application that feels it needs to control everything I do. Just grab those feeds for true offline reading and I'll be happy.

I used to be able to count on Straw for this, but unfortunately lack of active development has killed the application, as it will no longer run on anything more recent than Intrepid. :(

GoogleReader doesn't work for me offline, Liferea doesn't have true offline capablity, so I'm stumbling around looking for something that will work when I am forced to upgrade my Hardy installation on my eeepc...

--bornagainpenguin

UPDATE: Naufrago! (http://www.gnomefiles.com/app.php/Naufrago!) has the all imprtant offline reading feature for me, perhaps it can do so for you?

[Giant Speck]

I miss Knewsticker from KDE 3 and I wish GNOME had something exactly like it.