My chum Chris Griego recently turned me onto FeedLounge as an alternative to Bloglines. As a user of Bloglines for several years, I was a little skeptical at first, especially since FeedLounge isn’t free (it’s $5/month or $50/year). However, after trying it, I was convinced — I’ve ditched Bloglines in favor of FeedLounge.
FeedLounge, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a web-based RSS reader created Alex King and Scott Sanders. If I were trite, I could say that it’s “Bloglines + Web 2.0” but even typing that sentence makes me wince. In plain English, here're a few of FeedLounge’s advantages:
Tags — This one made the most difference to me. Down the left side of the screen are various categories, or, in this case, tags. And, like other tagging applications, items can be assigned any number of tags. So, for instance, I could put A List Apart in both “css” and “xhtml” if I wanted to.
Background Updates — Because it's all Ajaxy, most of the interaction requires no explicit server hits. So, as feeds gain entries, those entries just appear and the count next to the feed name is updated. Of course, this is all done without interrupting the rest of the screen; any entries which you may be in the middle of reading remain just where they are.
Granular Feed Reading — One of my big gripes with Bloglines was that if you clicked on the feed from the left side of the page, all of the entries from that feed would appear on the right side of the page (and they would all be marked as read). Naturally, that type of interface is available in FeedLounge as well, but there’re others from which to choose as well. The one I use is a 3-pane layout, similar to what you see in many e-mail clients. And, just like an e-mail client, the individual entries are only marked as read as you move from one to the next.
Full Keyboard Control — FeedLounge’s documentation summarizes their keyboard support saying that “what you think should work, does” (or words to that effect). And, indeed, that’s pretty much been the case. For example, when viewing entries in the 3-pane view, the up and down arrow keys move from one entry to the next (just as you’d expect).
In all, I’m really pleased with FeedLounge. Were I less convinced, I might have signed up for a month at a time, but I’ve paid through for the year.
Do the read items every go away? (I’m playing around with the 3 hour tour.)
Josh: If you set the “Read Items” pull-down towards the top of the screen to “Hide” (as opposed to “Show”), then they’re hidden. Does that kinda answer your question?
Hmm, I don’t see a “Read Items” pull-down. I’ve tried the help file, I’ve tried Safari, I’ve tried Firefox, I’ve tried different layouts.
*shrug*
Maybe this feature isn’t availabe in the demo version?
Well, maybe you’ll have to take my word for it, then ;). All the same, I’d be happy to send you a screenshot or something if you’d like :-/.
It’s painful now when I have to refer back to Bloglines for feeds I haven’t transitioned over yet.
The Hide/Show option for read items, ability to choose if updated items are marked unread or not, resizeable panes and a bunch of other little stuff aren’t in the demo yet. We made major backend changes in the Eirik release a month back and haven’t yet updated the demo. It’s on the to-do list. :)
Just a quick follow-up: we’ve got the demo updated to the latest now.