Info about a feed. Note the diagnostic message alerting you to why this feed has errors.
As far as actually reading content from feeds goes, I’ve found it to be very usable in that respect, as well. Navigation is intuitive. Hitting the spacebar will scroll down in a long article. If you reach the end of the article, another press of the spacebar will advance to the next item. You can also use the up and down arrows to navigate through items. Alternately, you can use n and b for “next” and “back”. There are several other shortcuts as well, for actions such as adding a new feed, getting information about the feed you’re currently reading, etc. For command-line curmudeons like myself, this is what differentiates FeedLounge from most other web-based apps.
FeedLounge fades to the background
One of the coolest things, something that really makes FeedLounge feel less like a web page and more like a desktop app, is the way that certain actions will pop up what appears to be a modal dialog. The rest of the web page in the background is greyed out to indicate that it can’t be accessed until you either complete the current action or cancel it. And in fact, the mouse will not interact with the other portions of the page. Touches like this set FeedLounge above the crowd.
The main downside to a web-based aggregator is that you don’t get access to previously read items when you are offline. That’s one reason why I haven’t really tried other web-based aggregators, such as BlogLines or Kinja, before. But how often do you need to do that? Personally, I’m hardly ever without web access when I’m on a computer. On the plus side, with a web-based aggregator, the record of which items you have or have not read is centralized. I look forward to seeing what improvements will come down the pipe for this app. I’m going try switching to FeedLounge for my daily feed browsing for a while. It might just become a permanent switch.
Related posts:
- The State of FeedLounge
" Alex has posted a moderately detailed article explaining The State of FeedLounge. For any newcomers who don’t know what FeedLounge is, it’s a web..." - Feedlounge is live
" This is old news now, but what the heck — I haven’t posted in a while, and this will be quick. In case you..." - FeedLounge 1.0a2
" The FeedLounge team updated the server with some new code today. They’ve fixed several bugs, and added some new features. I found some bugs..." - FeedLounge wants browser developers
" The FeedLounge team is looking for some browser developers to help with testing. This is to help distinguish better between bugs that may be..." - Improved Thunderbird OPML
" I’ve updated the OPML import/export patch for Mozilla Thunderbird that I mentioned before. The new patch comes from Robert Sayre, and improves both the..."
5 Comments
Whoa! It’s beautiful. I hope they contact me soon so I can try it out…
Hey!
Don’t forget t3h Blox0r!
Best web aggregator ever!
All XUL, all gecko, all rox0r!
http://www.bloxor.com
that looks nice from a technical point of view (i.e. the desktop-app nature of it). on the other hand, i don’t like 3-pane RSS readers much any more, so i’m sure i’ll stick with bloglines for now…
I’m interested to see how this compares to NewsGator. With their acquisition of FeedDemon, I think that NewsGator is goin’ to do something rather cool by purging together offline and online feed reading. But i’m sure Alex has made something that can compete with that.
looks like a good program
13 Trackbacks
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[...] Posted June 10th, 2005 in General by Alex Dougal Campbell has written the first in-depth review of FeedLounge. (Note: there are [...]
Extra-links per il weekend
* Marco segnala FeedLounge (in alpha), un nuovo feed reader web based e anch’esso con tecnologia Ajax. Molto cool la possibilità di taggare i post come vuoi, una funzionalità che manca a Bloglines. Qualcuno ha già postato le prime impressioni.
* Ta…
New Web-based RSS reader for Firefox users
Firefox users get tired and frustrated running into sites that only work with Internet Explorer. FeedLounge is, for now, refreshing revenge. It’s a new, Web-based RSS reader that works only with Firefox. That’s not necessarily by design — FeedLounge…
FeedLounge: Tagging and Renaming
Two things I’m really, really loving about Feedlounge:
Tagging feeds. As Dougal notes, you can tag feeds to give you clouds of feeds. He uses the “perl programming” “php programming” example, which really should be a…
[...] rating a lot of buzz. From the sound of it I’m already preparing to make the switch. Reading others talk about rss I’m always surprised by the number of people who use [...]
[...] and fully featured paid subscription accounts. [via my WordPress Dashboard which was via Dougal]
This entry was posted
on Sunday, [...]
[...] to create a thin-client-like experience, and the early alpha testers are coming back with very positive reviews: “FeedLounge often feels much more like a desktop application than [...]
[...] when we did? No. Are our alpha users jumping up and down about how kick-ass we are? You bet. 4. Sure, early and often works in open source, there is no reason it wouldn’t wor [...]
[...] Blog alemine bir kez daha teÅŸekkür etmem gerekiyor. Bir zincir ÅŸeklinde beni ÅŸu anda internet teknolojisi olarak en yeni olarak kabul edilen Ajax’a ulaÅŸtırdıkları için. Zinciri silsile ÅŸeklinde saymam sanırım sizin içinde faydalı olur. Ä°lk kaynak alexking Gerçekten çalışmalarını ve üretkenliÄŸini takdir etmemek elde deÄŸil. Åžu anda geliÅŸtirmekte oldukları online feed reader projesi için bayağı zaman harcadıkları ortada. Google’ın pazar politikasında olduÄŸu gibi ÅŸu anda davetiye usulü hizmet veriyor ve sadece firefox browserını destekliyorlar. Alex King’in bloguna bakarken, feedlounge ‘un eleÅŸtirisini yapan Dougal Gunters’in sitesine ulaÅŸtım. Aslında Alex’in ve diÄŸer arkadaÅŸlarının içinde olduÄŸu gurubun yaptığı çalışmanın Ajax denilen yeni bir teknolojiler bütünün ortaya çıkışı olduÄŸunu öğrendim. Son durakta Jesse James Garrett’in Ajax’ın ne olduÄŸu, neden böyle biÅŸeye ihtiyaç duyulduÄŸu ve nasıl olacağı hakkındaki yazısına ulaÅŸtım. [...]
[...] I’m one of the lucky alpha testers who have had access for the last six months. I committed to using FeedLounge as my only feed reader, dumping SharpReader and the RSS capabilities of Thunderbird. I’ve watched FeedLounge go through some rough spots, and it always came back better than before. Alex and Scott have done an outstanding job with everything from the great AJAXian user interface to the invisible backend. When the time comes, if the price is right, I’m going to be a paying customer. [...]
[...] goal was to create a thin-client-like experience, and the early alpha testers are coming back with very positive reviews: 网站创始人之一，Scott [...]
[...] Scott Sanders, one of the founders, writes in his blog that he created FeedLounge as a web-based application because he works From many different machines. Their goal was to create a thin-client-like experience, and the early alpha testers are coming back with very positive reviews: [...]