Love reading articles on RSS feeds? Do you need to keep a tab on tons of articles every day? You need to check out FeedReader. It’s not only one of the most popular feed readers, but it also is among the few ones which offer offline reading as well. Let’s take a look at how you can use Feedreader effectively.
FeedReader Online Tips
Keyboard Shortcuts:
These are very useful for power users who like to use the keyboard for everything. Using these you can navigate between articles, mark them read, and so on.
Edit Feed Name:
Name of the feed is usually the same as the name of the website. Sometimes, websites append too much of text, and the name becomes a mess. To edit the name, hover your mouse over the name, and click on the pencil icon. Click on it, and you can shorten the name to something you prefer.
Export/Import Feeds
If you are moving to feedreader, you can carry subscriptions from your old site to Feedreader. To do this, you will need to export OPML file from your old feed, and then import it into feedreader.
Click on the settings icon, and then choose import/export subscriptions.
Re-Arrange Categories
Each feed is listed under a category. However, those categories are sorted alphabetically. If you want to arrange them as per your choice, here is what you can do:
- Click on Settings icon > Manage Categories
- This will reveal Edit mode for categories.
- Decide an order for the feeds. Probably note it somewhere.
- Now click the edit button on the category you want it to be at the top. Add digit “1” before it, Add digit “2” before the name of the next feed, and so on.
- Refresh the browser, and your categories will be sorted according to the number.
Feedreader Offline Tips
If you are a heavy reader, Feedreader’s Offline reader which is available here for download, should be the right tool for you. You can download feeds, and offline for peaceful reading if you wish so.
Automatic Feed download
Depending on how quick you want the feeds to become available, you can configure it to download. For each feed, you can choose the update period, update priority, and archive size. If you have too many feeds, the last setting will make sure older & read feeds are removed automatically.
Smart Offline Reading
To start reading offline, click on File menu > Offline > Work Offline. Before going offline, you can choose to download only unread articles, or download all of them and then switch or just go offline.
I usually download all the articles and then switch, so I don’t miss out anything. If you stay connected all day, the software will keep downloading new articles. So, when you go offline, it won’t take much time.
Smartfeed
If you wish to read articles based on certain topics, you can create a smart feed. These are based on keywords on which you want to read.
- Go to File menu > New > Smartfeed.
- Add keywords and decide the conditions.
- You can see a live preview for better understanding.
- Save it as a new Feed.
Article Options
Since its available as software, it can do a lot many things. You can right click on any article and choose to add tags, email, copy the link, copy the complete contents and so on. This might not be useful for all, but if you are into research, this can be useful.
While both Online and Offline versions of Feedreader do a good job, I liked the offline a lot better. It also comes with desktop notifications – which means that anytime an article goes online, you can read it instantly.
Which feed reader are you using? Let us know in the comments.
