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Blog under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Sep
26
(2005)
Trying NetNewsWire again…
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: aggregator, netnewswire, rss, safari, software.
So, after switching to Safari RSS for a couple of months, and really liking the simple (i.e., nonexistent) interface and unified display, I finally got fed up with the quirks in the Safari implementation. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes for a large feed set to display, pegging the CPU at 100% for the whole time (this was most obvious when viewing my Flickr feeds, which could have 500 images, each of which are downloaded apparently simultaneously).
Also, the filter/sorting options are just plain incomplete. Without a “show only new items” option, it’s a real pain in the ass to view new items. Either you have to set it to show a whole bunch of items, and sort the newest items to the top, to ensure viewing all new items, or you narrow the display and have to iterate over various subgroupings or filterings with the “New” sort option selected. Please, fix this… Add a “New items only” option, that would do what it said (and, items wouldn’t disappear from the display as they are “read” – they would simply be marked as read, and disappear the next time the display is refreshed).
So, after running the handy dandy Safari feeds to OPML export script, I’m back in NetNewsWire. It’s a really great app, but I already miss the Safari unified display (warts and all) – the “Combined View” layout in NNW just isn’t the same. I’ll give it a week or two to see if I can get my head back into NNW-think.
Meanwhile, this is what greeted me in NNW after running the import-from-OPML process, and updating all feeds:
Update: I went screaming back to Safari RSS less than 24 hours after trying to switch to NNW. Performance wasn’t any better when using the Combined view in NNW – it may have actually been worse. I’m back to Safari RSS now, and am just learning to be more patient as things load 
I am sure I mentioned this before, but have you tried Shrook lately? I’m still on it and really liking it. It could be, at this point however, that I am just so familiar with it that I don’t know what I’m missing. I wouldn’t mind using something like the Safari tool, but don’t use Safari enough in favour of Firefox.
Yeah, I’ve actually got a Shrook license – before NNW2 came out, it was my aggregator of choice. Loved the iTunes-like interface, and it had smart folders before any of the others. But now that I’ve gotten into the Safari RSS groove, the other aggregators just have too much stuff in them. Even though I subscribe to almost 500 feeds, all I need (and want) is a way to view the newest items in all of my feeds – perhaps divided into separate categories. I don’t use flagged items anymore (just fling them to my del.icio.us account for safekeeping). I don’t use the blog-post-from-within-the-aggregator features (the WordPress post interface is good enough, and offline posts are fine in BBEdit until I’m online). I don’t use post archive searching – that’s what Google is for. Safari really does all that I need, and if it had a “new items only” view, it would be just about perfect for me.