In addition to being a fantastic email and nntp newsgroup reader,
mozilla Thunderbird 8 now has blog reading support. I have been trying to use it to replace
RSS Bandit and
FeedDemon for a couple weeks now and its just not working. Its sooooo close, but not quite there. Two things make it an absolute no-go for me:
-
I cannot import my opml feed list. In fact why the heck did they invent yet another xml format for feeds. Just use an OPML file instead of this silly feeds.rdf. Yes, I realize there is some other tidbits in the feeds.rdf file that the standard OPML spec doesn't specify, but Thunderbird should use OPML and extend it by adding some attributes or child elements within their own xml namespace. I have a vision of this working as follows. I use the UI to import my standard OPML file (without any Thunderbird specific extensions) and Thunderbird ask where I would like to root the feed folders. Obviously, each folder name should default to the title of the feed. I have well over 100 feeds and without an easy way to import *and move* my feed list around, this is a deal breaker.
-
When using the "Show article summary instead of loading the web page" mode, (which should always be default), give me a button at the bottom of the article, or in the article header to quickly jump to the article's web page (for commenting, or just browsing the article's web page/site)
Give me those two features, and I can switch. Give me the ones below, and I'll start sending money and crusading for the
Thunderbird cause...
- Let me save the feeds in an IMAP folder. What the hell does Thunderbird care if I say to store the feed items in a local folder or one of my IMAP folders. If I could specify my OPML as a file in an IMAP account, or even at a (password protected) web address this would be an incredible feature.
I move from machine to machine allot (home machine, laptop, work machine), and storing my feed list and latest feeds with their read/unread status in one place would be magnificent.
- Let me specify an xslt file to transform the feed consent when in "Show article summary instead of loading the web page" mode. Rss Bandit does this and its surprisingly cool way to do things, that should be a piece of cake for Thunderbird with gecko.
- If I am viewing a folder that contains other folders that hold feed items, show the aggregated list of feed items to me. See RSS Bandit.
posted @ Friday, October 01, 2004 11:54 PM