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 might be missing something obvious, but it seems to be more difficult than necessary to organize subscriptions in NetNewsWire. I’ve got 377 feeds, and sometimes I need to go into my subscriptions list to find stuff, rather than just living in the “New Items” folder (where I do spend about 98% of my time in NNW).

One problem I’m having is that there doesn’t seem to be a “list all subscriptions” view. I can use Smart Lists to list blog posts, but I can’t seem to list all subscriptions anywhere.

Also, I can only put each subscription in one (and only one) folder. That can be a problem. Yes, I can make folder hierarchies, but what do I do with a subscription like Brian? His blog could go in any of the following folders, but they don’t fit into a hierarchy, so I have to choose…

• eLearning
• campus bloggers
• canadian bloggers
• northernvoice attendees
• friends
• careo users
• xserve owners
• new parents

So? Which one folder would he go into? Back when I was using Shrook, it had some really nice subscription management features. It was modeled more after iTunes than Mail. All subscriptions were in a “Library”, and I could manually drag them to folders, and I could make Smart Folders to automagically pull subscriptions and feeds together.

Which leaves me stuck. I’ve got some feeds that I want to update info for, but I have no idea where they are in my subscription folders. And I can’t search for subscriptions, only for blog entries. So, how do I append someone’s name to their blog subscription title, if I can’t find their subscription?

Shrook also has a nice UI innovation that is like a dynamic column view – the leftmost column shifts out of view to make more room for the content I’m trying to read.

If I spend 98% of my time in “New items”, why does the subscription folder hierarchy need to take up screen real estate, when what I really want to see is the entry list and post display pane?

Update: Yeah. I just installed the latest version of Shrook, and while I don’t plan to switch back, NNW could definitely be improved by the column view and “library” model of subscription management…