I’ve never been comfortable with NetNewsWire’s user interface, NewsFire crashes and has only two panes, and EventBox doesn’t download any new articles, and I’m in search of a new RSS reader. I would have gone in for Innman’s Fever, but my lack of a steady internet connection leads me to believe I don’t really have access to my feeds at the right time. A relatively quiet reader, NewsLife only has a couple of recommendations here and there, but in my week long interaction with the client I’m thoroughly satisfied.
There are the default feeds loaded in my the app (except for SA)
User Interface
Having a good user interface is key to an RSS reader. While NewsLife isn’t exactly the Convertbot of the Mac, it is pleasant and easy on the eyes. Featuring the standard sidebar/main window UI concept, it’s something that’s familiar and works just fine.
The main window lists all your articles with a fairly generous feed summary with white space all around the articles. This is one of the things I find missing in NetNewsWire which shows everything in a cramped up window. Although to be fair, NNW’s compact look is better suited for heavy RSS users. In addition to the cleaner look, NewsLife will pull in any prominent image from the article and show it as a thumbnail. Clicking through reveals the full article, and shows you ‘where you are’ using the breadcrumbs bar at the top. Everything has been done elegantly, with everything remaining as snappy as possible.
I did notice some bugs that crept in once in a while. Feeds would jump about randomly, and if you notice in the screenshot, our feed has got a hideous yellow favicon. There are also times when it won’t cache some feeds for offline reading (while others work just fine). Nothing too glaring, but certainly getting in the way of a smooth experience.
Features
The UI also features a sidebar on the right, which provides instant functions. First, the News Bin. You’re reading an article, and want to finish it later, just click the plus button and it goes into the News Bin for reading later. This is similar to flagging’ and ‘starring’ Sadly, this doesn’t pull the HTML version of the article or anything (we’re so used to such things on the iPhone).
You can use the global search, click the Unread or Published Today buttons to instantly see what’s new. You don’t need to twiddle any complicated settings or options.
At the bottom of the window you can access certain options to speak the article, send it to a desktop blogging client like MarsEdit, or send it to digg or delicious. No Instapaper support though, sorry.
At the end of the day
NewsLife is an easy, laid back, and simple RSS reader. It doesn’t sync with any online service, no built in webkit browser, no Core Animation effects, but does what it’s supposed to do. One glaring omission, is the lack of auto-detection of RSS feeds. I didn’t have any problem since I just imported the OPML file from NetNewsWire, but it’s one of the reasons I’m holding back my recommend. I don’t have any background info ThinkMac Software, the developers of NewsLife, but I hope they have it in their best interests to iron out the bugs as soon as possible. If the developer fixes those few UI bugs, and adds auto-detection, I’d give my handy recommendation for its $15 pricetag. As always, try it out!.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
And what about RSS Menu ?
I’m completely satisfied by this one !
Great !
Try Vienna RSS client : – clean interface – reliable operation – open source.
Not sure what you mean Eventbox won’t download new articles?
Actually, EventBox works just fine here. Has always worked fine.
Check your facts..
I don’t think it’s a case of checking your facts, for instance I’ve been using Newsfire daily for the past 5 years and it doesn’t crash for me. Some things are spurious, I would say that the Eventbox comment is entirely accurate, just personal.
As Tagscuderia said, it’s personal. I’m sure it works for many, but for some reason no matter what I’ve tried it refuses to sync up to Google (after the first download of articles). I could explain this further, but my point is, it doesn’t work for me
Milind, do you have nested folders or something like that?
My feeds are arranged into folders for “Apple”, “Friends”, “Tech”, etc, with a few feeds in the root. All these feeds don’t update. I only get new feeds when I delete the Eventbox cache from the library folder and reset the plist file. In any case, I use Tweetie for twitter so my whole purpose behind Eventbox is lost.