NetNewsWire: Now with more Review!
We have reviewed a few different RSS readers here at MacApper before, like NewsFire and Cyndicate, but the one that many people tout above all, is NetNewsWire. NetNewsWire v3.1 is a very mature application, and has a few features that set it apart from the competition. We have mentioned NetNewsWire a few different times on MacApper, but this time it is more of a full review.
Very recently, NewtNewsWire 3.1 was released free for all Mac users. If you have been using a free RSS reader up until now, and had been eying NNW, this is as good a time as ever to give it a spin.
The first thing you will notice about NNW when you open it is it’s three-pane window. To the left you have your subscriptions, the top half is the article names, and the bottom half is the actual article content. This type of view is pretty standard among other RSS aggregators, like Vienna and Cyndicate.
At first glance, NNW looks to be your run of the mill RSS app. You can organize feeds into folders, the unread items in each feed is indicated next to each feed in the sidebar, and NNW will take the feed URL right from the clipboard when you click “Subscribe†in the toolbar. It’s once you really start getting into your feeds that NNW proves itself worthy of a place in your dock.
Normally, when you click on a link in an RSS reader, it will open it up in your default browser. NNW on the other hand, will open up that link in a tab on the right. Based on the ever popular WebKit, the browser is built right into the window. To get back to your feeds after you are done with a link, just click the “News Items†tab at the top of the list. You can also have NNW return to the news items tab after you close a tab. The built-in web browser is probably my favorite feature of NNW, as it helps to keep clutter down in my Safari windows, and all my feed-reading in one place.
Another nifty feature of NNW is it’s sharing capabilities. You can mail the contents of the current page or a link to the page, just like in Safari, post the page to a weblog, post to VooDoo Pad, send the link to del.icio.us, or send the link right to Twitterrific. This is great when you come across a story while feed reading and want to show it to your friends, mail it to your uncle, or save it for later.
One of the most attractive features of NNW though, might be it’s ability to sync with NewsGator Online. If you sign up for a NewsGator Online account (free), each time you quit NNW, it will sync all of the feeds you subscribed to, and any articles you read will be reflected online. This way you can have all of your feeds stay up to date whether you are at home, or on the go.
Now these are just a few of the major things that I enjoyed about NNW. There are a myriad of other little interface tweaks that you can make in the preferences to suit NNW to your RSS-surfing needs. I wanted to keep this review focused on the things that set NNW apart from other readers, instead of just talking about the same old things that you find in all RSS readers on the market. For the way that I read my feeds, NNW did not hinder me in any way, though please, if you have experienced any problems with NNW in the past or presently, let us know about them in the comments.
NetNewsWire is free and available from NewsGator.
What is your favorite/least favorite thing about NNW? Do you use it as your everyday news reader?
The best thing about NewsGator Online is that it has an iPhone interface, so when I’m away from home I can still keep up with my feeds, then when I sit back down at my computer at home, I’ll only have new stuff in my list. Very seamless!
Best thing: You can “clip” an article in NNW and save it to read later when offline.
Worst thing: It’s not Google Reader. I really want to like NNW, I really do. But for some reason, after trying NNW for a few days, I keep coming back to Google Reader.
You don’t have to quit NNW for it to sync your feeds between machines. I have NNW installed on my Macs at home and at work and every time a machine wakes up from sleep, the feeds get synchonized. It works without a hiccup for me. And it’s free!
I have tried NNW and G-Reader but came back to Safari to manage/read my feeds. One possible advantage of NNW over Safari is that it has built-in options to manage ads. However, I accomplish this with the freeware Stand. So, my question is what are the benefits of using NNW to read/manage feeds over Safari? Many thanks.
The biggest problem for me while using NNW is actually a ‘feature’. And that is it remembers tabs when it quits. So when i reopen NNW the old tabs are still present. I can see when it can be useful, but for me its a nuisance since whenever i open NNW and click on various articles, I realize i need to hunt where the new tabs start after those from the previous session. I find myself going through previous read articles and trying to figure out whether i have read it already or not. Only workaround is that I have to remember to choose ‘Tabs’ from the menu and click on ‘Close all tabs’ everytime before quitting the application or as soon as i open it.
There should be a toggle option in preferences to ‘keep tabs from previous session’. And if one needs to open tabs from last session, there should be a menu option for it like its present in Safari.
NNW forcefully remembering tabs makes an otherwise excellent app cumbersome to use. Why can’t the tab functionality be like Safari or Firefox? I want old read articles to open only when i want it. Why would anyone want to keep all articles he has already read be always forcibly present.