- Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Readers
- Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Reader Answer
- Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Reader Download
- Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Reader Online
NetNewsWire 5.0 is a free and open source RSS reader for Mac. (We're also working on an iOS version.) NetNewsWire shows you articles from your favorite blogs and news sites, and it keeps track of what you've read. If you've been going from page to page in your browser looking for new articles to read, you can let NetNewsWire bring them to. The name Atom applies to a pair of related Web standards.The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources. Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a website. To provide a web feed, the site owner may use specialized. NetNewsWire is a smooth-running and easy-to-use Mac OS X application that provides the required tools and features to access the latest news and read your articles from within a distraction free environment. RSS and Atom reader. From NetNewsWire's main window you can manage and organize your. Why Write an RSS Reader. We support the open web. The big social networking sites are damaging society and eroding democracy — and we believe one of the ways out of this is to get our news via the open web rather than from Twitter and Facebook. NetNewsWire is part of repairing the web we lost, and it's part of building the web we want.
Alternatively you can download the latest stable version of this software.
It uses a familiar three-paned interface -- like that of Outlook Express or Mailsmith -- to display websites and their news.Features include:The Weblog Editor allows one to post to Radio, Blogger, Movable Type, and other types of weblogs.
NetNewsWire works with most of the popular weblog systems.The Notepad is an outline, a place to take notes and store headlines, subscriptions, URLs, and files.
The Find command looks for specific text in headlines.AppleScript support allows one to get and set information about headlines and subscriptions.
The Scripts menu runs your AppleScript scripts from within NetNewsWire.Headlines are now stored between runs, which means you can download the news and then read it on the train or anywhere you don't have web access.
Features:
- News comes to you
- Spend less time surfing. Let NetNewsWire do the work for you, as it gathers your news and tells you which items are new. Subscribe to feeds from all over the web—and from the built-in list of thousands of feeds in the Sites Drawer.
- Tabbed browser
- Open web pages in NetNewsWire's browser, and see them the same as in Safari, but with the convenience of staying in the same window. NetNewsWire remembers tabs between launches, so you come right back to where you left off last time.
- Searching
- Search your news items with a standard Apple search widget—as in Mail and other applications.
- Podcasts and enclosures
- Automatically download podcasts and enclosures. Send podcasts to iTunes with with your choice of genre and playlist.
- Smart lists
- Gather news from all your feeds based on your criteria. It's like smart playlists in iTunes—only for news instead of music.
- Mark items that you want to keep—they stay forever or until you mark them as unflagged.
- Synchronization
- Keep your subscriptions, news item status, and even browser tabs synchronized between two or more computers.
- Bloglines syncing
- Read your Bloglines feeds with NetNewsWire for the best of both worlds, a rich desktop client and acessible-anywhere server.
- Search-result subscriptions
- Make special subscriptions that display results from search engines like Yahoo, Feedster, and Daypop, or from keyword searches at Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Technorati. Easily keep up with topics that interest you.
- Widescreen view
- The three-column view is perfect for laptops and today's monitors that have more horizontal space.
- Persistence
- Tell NetNewsWire how long to keep news items, so you can still read them even after they disappear from the feed.
- Scripting and Automator
- Control NetNewsWire with AppleScript—and with Automator too, if you're running OS X 10.4 or greater. Add commands to NetNewsWire via the scripts menu.
- Scripted feeds
- Generate custom RSS and Atom feeds via AppleScript, Perl, Python, Ruby, and other scripting languages.
- HTML Differences
- Track changes in news items as they're edited and updated.
- Activity window
- Stay in control as NetNewsWire shows you exactly what it's downloading.
- Dinosaurs
- Find feeds that haven't updated in a long time via the Dinosaurs window.
- Inline summaries and datelines
- Show summaries and datelines in the headlines list to make skimming faster and easier—especially for the widescreen view.
- Versatile headlines list
- Add date, subject, and creator columns to the headlines list—and sort on any of these columns.
- Change the fonts in the subscriptions and headlines lists, turn on and off the unread count in the Dock, download files, and more.
What's New:
- Fixed a bug where opening the preferences window could cause NetNewsWire to ask for your FTP syncing password, even though you don't use FTP syncing. I think. (I couldn't get it to happen on my machine, so I'm flying a little blind. Fix makes sense, though.)
- Removed microformats feature. I was going to wait till 3.2, but decided to do it now. (Less code, fewer resources, better performance loading HTML.)
- Updated French localization.
Popular apps in RSS/XML Utilities
Developer: NewsGator Technologies
Price: $30 Omniplan pro 3 6 2 – professional grade project management.
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4
Universal: Yes
Trial: Fully-featured (30 days)
As products age, the nature of the changes seen in subsequent productreleases evolves. Early in a product's life, the revisions often bringlarge changes as developers look to fully flesh out exactly what it isthey are offering. This is doubly so in young, rapidly changing markets.Later in a product's life, though, the revisions tend to be smaller.Changes in mature products are often aimed at polishing the product andincreasing usability instead of radically redefining the product. File cabinet pro 7 7 tablet.
The evolution of NetNewsWire follows this pattern, almost to the letter.As our previous reviews demonstrate, versions 1.0 and 2.0 saw many major changes.Features were added, removed, and spun out into new products whileRanchero Software and, later, NewsGator Technologies, determined whatNetNewsWire would become. Market and technology changes in thesyndication space forced the application's development in certaindirections. With NetNewsWire 3.0, though, it's clear that NetNewsWirehas entered the mature phase of its life.
That being the case, I will focus primarily on the changes toNetNewsWire since our last review.
Appearances
Whenever you use an updated a piece of software, changes to the userinterface are among the first thing that you notice. When launchingNetNewsWire 3.0 for the first time, the most obvious changes can clearlybe tied back to applications like iTunes and Mail. The subscription listhas taken on the same blue background as the source lists in theaforementioned applications. NetNewsWire has also inherited another ofiTunes' features, Cover Art. In NetNewsWire, the Cover Art widget showsa snapshot of the home page for the selected feed or article.
NetNewsWire 3.0's user interface features several refinements overprevious versions.
Although displaying Cover Art cuts into the vertical space you could usefor displaying subscriptions (and may be the difference between whetheror not your subscription list needs to scroll), it provides severalbenefits. If you're viewing a folder of subscriptions, glancing at theCover Art can quickly tell you the source of the selected article.Furthermore, Cover Art somewhat rectifies the complaint that, by readingfeeds, you miss out on the overall design of the Web site. That's not tosay that the Cover Art view is perfect, however. I know that the CoverArt image for a Web site does get updated, but I cannot figure out whattriggers the update. As far as I can tell, there is no way for a userrequest a refresh. This comes into play because I've seen problems withthe display. In one case, one feed was displaying the cover art foranother feed. In other cases, feeds were displaying blank images (eitherall white or all black) in place of the Web site snapshot.
Another addition which appears similar to an iTunes feature is FullScreen mode. As you would expect, given the name, activating Full Screenmode hides the menu bar and enlarges the main window to take up thewhole screen, allowing for undisturbed feed reading. To further minimizedistractions, you can also hide portions of the user interface.NetNewsWire 2.0 allowed you to hide the tab bar when it wasn't in use,but new in 3.0 is the ability to hide the subscription list. Both thetab bar and the subscription list can be explicitly hidden at any time,but both also support automatic hiding. Automatically hiding the tab barworks as you would expect. Automatically hiding the subscription listessentially makes the subscription list part of the News Items tab—yoursubscriptions are visible when viewing the News Items tab and hiddenwhen viewing a Web page.
Automatically hiding subscriptions works well with another ofNetNewsWire's new features, vertical tabs. The new tabs have additionalfunctionality compared to the more-familiar horizontal tabs (which arestill available). The vertical tabs can display a thumbnail of their Webpage and can be dragged-and-dropped. The drag-and-drop feature can beused to re-arrange the tab order within NetNewsWire or to drag the URLto another application. Neither of these features is available whenusing the horizontal tabs.
Hiding subscriptions while browsing the Web opens up horizontalspace, which can be used to display NetNewsWire's new vertical tabs.
There are a few other differences between the two tab types. The widthof the side tab gutter is fixed, so you will only ever see the firstword or two of the Web page title. For instance, the two Daring Fireballarticles I have open in tabs currently display their name as 'DaringFi….' With only a few tabs open, the horizontal tabs would display moreof the titles, though the difference would be lost as you opened moretabs. In either case, NetNewsWire could stand to inherit some ofSafari's smarts whendealing with tab titles. Conversely, if you choose not to display thepage thumbnails, the side tab gutter can display many more tabs beforerunning out of screen real-estate. Furthermore, the side tag gutter usesa scroll bar when tabs extend off the screen, as opposed to the pop-upmenu used with the horizontal tabs.
The style of tab you prefer will probably depend heavily on yourpersonal taste. I like the look and functionality of the new tabs, but Ifeel that they make the News Items interface a bit cramped. However,this is likely due to using the Widescreen View on a 1280×584 display. Isuspect I'd have no such complaints on a larger screen.
Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Readers
In keeping with the theme of 'Evolution, Not Revolution,' NetNewsWireincludes a number of smaller tweaks that pay dividends. The NewSubscription sheet now includes a pop-up menu for choosing a folder forthe subscription, which eliminates the frustration of having tore-organize your subscriptions after adding a new feed. Another suchtweak is the addition of browser-style Back and Forward options forarticles. I consider the Back button the more important of the two, asyou now have the ability to jump back to the previous article when youaccidentally continue on to the next unread item.
To further focus the news reading experience, NetNewsWire now allows youto hide your already-read items.
The new version of NetNewsWire also includes a user interface for theAttention Score feature introduced in version 2.1. The Attention Scoreattempts to provide a numerical value for how much you use a feed. Inversion 2.1, the score could be used to sort your subscription list. Thenew user interface in version 3.0 is called the Attention Report, whichattempts to show how much you interact with each feed. Ostensibly, youcan use this report to unsubscribe from feeds you tend to ignore.However, a feed's Attention Score is based on clicks, items flagged,items e-mails, and items posted to your Weblog or del.icio.us. Myexperience is that this algorithm systematically over-weightssubscriptions that do not provide full text within the feed. Thefull-text feeds that I read religiously have some of the lowestAttention Scores, since I never need to click through to the originalWeb site.
The Attention Report attempts to show you your most popular feeds.
Syncing
Syncing received a bit of an overhaul with the NetNewsWire 2.1 release.This is understandable, since this was the first release followingNetNewsWire's acquisition by NewsGator Technologies. The 2.1 releaseintroduced syncing with NewsGator, which gave users the ability to workwith their subscriptions on a variety of platforms, including WindowsPCs, the iPhone, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile devices.Additionally, this form of multi-platform syncing was superior to theBloglines integration introduced in version 2.0. Whereas the Bloglinesintegration required you to manage feeds using the Bloglines interface,NewsGator syncing lets you manage feeds from within NetNewsWire and havechanges propagated to all your synced platforms. From a userperspective, it offered the functionality of .Mac or FTP syncingcombined with Bloglines cross-aggregator support.
Support for NewsGator syncing has also improved with NetNewsWire 3.0.The primary difference is speed—syncing with the NewsGator service isnow much faster than in previous releases. The first time I tried thenew version, I was literally in awe of how fast my feeds weredownloading. The other place where this speed boost is noticeable iswhen quitting the application. NetNewsWire attempts to perform a syncwhen you quit. That way, any changes made in NetNewsWire since you lastsynced will be propagated out to NewsGator. Under the 2.1 releases, thissync would take several minutes. Sometimes, it was long enough to abortshutdown or logout attempts. That is no longer the case with NetNewsWire3.0. I haven't timed this process, but I think it is safe to say thatthis final sync takes under a minute to complete.
Another NewsGator feature supported by NetNewsWire 3.0 is Clippings,which are essentially the NewsGator version of Flagged Items. You add anitem to your Clippings and it gets saved until you remove it from yourClippings. Unlike Flagged Items, your Clippings are synced. Also, youcan have subfolders within your Clippings, and you can share yourClippings via RSS. Previously, I subscribed to my own Clippings feed andused this feature to save items I found while using NewsGator Online.Once I was done with the particular clipping, though, I'd have to logback into NewsGator Online to delete the Clipping. Now that NetNewsWirehas full Clipping support, though, I can manage the process withoutswitching out of the application.
Personally, I feel like there is a bit of overlap between Clippings andFlagged Items, and I wish there were some way to merge the two. I realizeI could always add all of the items I've flagged into my Clippingsfolder and hide the Flagged Items Subscription, but as far as I can tellthere is no Clippings equivalent to either the Flag column or one-key(‘f') flagging.
Although NewsGator syncing is now the primary form of syncing supportedin NetNewsWire, Bloglines, .Mac, and FTP support still remain, though Ido not believe any new features are planned for these options.
Plays Well With Others
NetNewsWire first introduced the idea of integrating with externalapplications in version 2.0, with the Post to Weblog feature. Thisintegration was augmented in version 2.1 with addition of the Post todel.icio.us and Mail Link/Mail Contents commands.
NetNewsWire 3.0 continues this trend of integrating with externalapplication with the addition of several new features. The first two areSend To… commands. Send To VoodooPad creates a new page in an openVoodooPad document. If you havemultiple documents open, VoodooPad asks which document should containthe newly-added page. Unfortunately, though, the command fails silentlyif you have no VoodooPad documents open. This is more of a VoodooPadissue than a NetNewsWire issue, but it reflects poorly on the featurewhen you select a menu item and nothing appears to happen.
The second Send To… command is the Send To Twitterrific command. Unlikethe Send To VoodooPad command, Send To Twitterrific creates a brief notein Twitterrificcontaining the article name and URL so you can share what you arereading with your Twitter followers.
Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Reader Answer
For the most part, integration with external applications is focused onsharing or storing the articles you are reading. NetNewsWire's supportfor microformats, though, issomething entirely different. Microformats are a way of marking upcontent to provide additional meaning. When viewing Web pages,NetNewsWire detects two types of microformats—contacts and events. If either of thesemicroformats is present on a page, NetNewsWire displays the appropriatebadge and allows you to import the contacts or events into Address Bookand iCal, respectively.
By recognizing microformats on Web pages, NetNewsWire is able to addan event to iCal.
Outside of NetNewsWire, you can now use Spotlight to search your NewsItems. Nobody is claiming that Spotlight is without rough edges, butthis feature means that you can now run searches on your archive withouttying up the application.
Follow-Up
In the NetNewsWire 2.0 review, I raised several points that I'd like tofollow up on now that NetNewsWire 3.0 is available. In discussing thedifferences between the Traditional, Widescreen, and Combined Views, Icommented that Combined View did not feel as fast as the other views. Inversion 3.0, both the performance and the user interface are muchimproved. I've noticed little to no lag when cycling through articleswithin a folder or subscription. Occasionally, when switching to adifferent group or subscription, there will be a lag in updating thescreen with new content. I've also seen some random crashes while usingthis view, which I consider a real issue. Using the Hide Read Itemsfeature seems to alleviate some of these issues, perhaps by decreasingthe complexity of the view displayed. This is not an option if you needto reference an already-read read article, though. Performance issuesaside, I can't recommend using this view given the stability concerns.
The appearance of the Combined View has been modified to increaseusability.
In the previous review, I also expressed surprise at the fact that Icouldn't specify a podcast genre on a feed-by-feed basis. That remainsthe case, but it appears to be something of a standard to apply thePodcast genre to all podcasts. At least, this is what iTunes does whensubscribing to a podcast.
As has been the case with previous releases of NetNewsWire, a featurepresent in a past release has been removed from the new version ofNetNewsWire. In this case, said feature is the subscription Sharingfeature.
Aging Gracefully
Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Reader Download
Having spent a significant amount of time using the latest version, Ifeel like NetNewsWire 3.0 benefitted from the relative stability inthe syndication market. As far as I know, there were no majortechnological shifts that the application needed to support in thisrelease. There was no post-acquisition work that needed to be done tobring NetNewsWire under the NewsGator umbrella. As a result, thisrelease of NetNewsWire feels highly polished, focusing on usabilityimprovements over radical reengineering.
The only major problems I've encountered with this release are theperformance and crashing issues with the Combined View, which is whatprevents me from giving NetNewsWire our highest ranking. Although I haveyet to lose any data to a crash, I'm not comfortable with the idea ofworking in a scenario that has such known failure states.
Netnewswire 4 0 3 – Rss And Atom News Reader Online
Given that NetNewsWire 3.0 is a free upgrade for anybody with an activeNewsGator Online Premium Package, I do not see any reason to avoid thisrelease, unless you rely on the Combined View. If you fall into thatlatter group, you should hold out until an update addresses the issue.As far as I know, anybody who purchased NetNewsWire prior to itsacquisition by NewsGator should still be within the period of thecomplimentary Premium Package they received as a NetNewsWire owner.
Those who do not qualify for the free upgrade but want a powerful RSSand Atom reader for the Mac should seriously consider NetNewsWire,particularly if you ever see a need or desire to access your feeds onmultiple platforms. I truly feel that this is the best feed readingapplication I have used and well worth the money. Postbox 6 1 3 – powerful and flexible email client.
Copyright © 2007 Eric Blair, eblair@atpm.com. Reviewing in ATPM isopen to anyone. If you're interested, write to us atreviews@atpm.com.