[ticotek]

Hey guys/gals, just saw this program today, and although it's version 0.2, it has many of the features I need.

quote from site:
"There's a variety of RSS readers on Mac OS X, but none offer the style of NewsFire. NewsFire is brimming with Aqua-beauty and a rich, dynamic user experience. The others feel aesthetically unpleasant, bloated, and stuck in an interface paradigm that doesn't make sense for RSS. The kitchen sink is deliberately not included in this app - NewsFire is intensely focused on simplicity. NewsFire snubs complexity for a minimalist interface that is intuitive, unobtrusive, and a total joy to use.

NewsFire supports the two major feed formats - RSS and Atom. It also imports and exports OPML, a standard bookmark-like file format for news feeds. Importing your feeds from another newsreader is dead-simple! "

Really give it a try. At the moment it's free.

website: http://www.newsfirerss.com/

take care
PS, I have no relation with the author

[ae77]

very nice.

[zachs]

Awesome app.

[xi_hyperon]

Very cool - thanks for the heads-up.

[angelmb]

Looks nice, I am going to give it a try and check how it does compare with PulpFicltion Lite.

[Diggory Laycock]

Interesting - but until it has number of unreads in the dock it's no good for me.

[threestain]

try out news you can use (via vt or macupdate) its well good and most unobtrusive one I've found!

[Millennium]

This looks very nice indeed.

[EDIT: Everything below this]

OK; I've given it a quick run-through. This app shows a lot of promise. However, I do note a few problems:

Interface

The interface is a nice concept, but despite its claims of Mac-ness, it currently falls short in several important areas. In particular, it is rather clumsy to navigate using only the mouse. In particular, there is no way to simultaneously see both the list of articles in a feed and one particular article in that list; this kind of modality is not Mac-like. All-around, the interface is obviously (and very heavily) keyboard-centric, something sure to turn off new users.

Keyboard navigation needs a little ironing out as well, but the app shows a great deal of promise in this area. There needs to be a little better indication of exactly what the arrow keys do in any given situation, however. Sometimes they switch feeds, sometimes they switch between Article and List mode, and other times they scroll the feed. This makes the overall learning curve unnecessarily steep.

The real problem with the interface, I guess, is that it unsuccessfully tries to blend a newbie interfaces (lots of eyecandy, highly modal) and power-user interfaces (heavy keyboard emphasis, minimalist information presentation). The basic concepts are very solid, but their current execution is poor. That said, there is no reason that the app cannot improve. No new interface paradigm has ever really succeeded on the first try; this just needs a little shakedown, that's all. It will all fall into place soon enough.

Standards support
The app seems to have decent support for the various feed formats. Autodiscovery, however, is where it really shines. If it finds multiple feeds on a page, it will allow you to choose which one you want; most apps, by contrast, just give you the first one, or favor one format over another.

Bottom Line
Technology-wise, this application is well beyond its 0.2 release number. Interface-wise, the 0.2 is well-deserved, however: very solid concepts, but unrefined. Either way, this one is worth watching, because it stands to improve a great deal.

[Macanoid]

It's gotta be said, this is absolutely beautiful and for a 0.2 application amazingly stable and full-featured. Currently I find it takes up to much screen-estate and needs to much mousing to get to the news. Otherwise nothing but compliment. Will be following this closely as it's no newnetwire replacement yet!

[mdc]

i like it a lot.
i stopped using news you can use at version 2.7 since when i took out the dock icon the program would beep every time there was new news.

so far i am liking this program.

[mattmarshall]

I think it's annying that the feeds move around in the list, and very annoying that the name of the feed includes the latest article. Both problems mean the feed place/name keeps changing. Really, it's goddamn annoying.

Also, the arrow should open up the article right away. It's annoying that you select the thing from thel ist, then you have to select it again, then go all the way back to the original list to select other articles. You should just be able to click the arrow from the list of titles, and have it open in Safari.

- matt

[Love Calm Quiet]

What a cool phenomenon. MattMarshall: I don't find those 'annoyances' a problem: the way the operate can be changed in prefs (e.g., making the headline subsidiary to the name of the feed).

I'm new to the RSS feed phenomenon. Is there a way to locate feeds of interest or discover if a particular site has (hidden?) potential to offer feeds?

(sorry: living on another planet)

[Gee4orce]

Wow - I came over here to post about this app myself, and found that I'm not alone in admiring it! I really like the interface - of course there are a few things I'd like to see, like groups and selecting multiple feeds at a time (isn't that 1/2 the fun of RSS ?).

Power User Tip
If you do 'view package contents' by control-clicking the application icon, and go to the resources folder, you'll find a file called 'style.css'. Open this in your favourite CSS editor (erm, like CSSEdit ), and you can significantly customise the way the app displays feeds and stories. I changed the blue mouseover highlight to something more subtle, and changed the font that it uses.

[mdc]

the best way i have seen to find rss/atom feeds is to go to sites and just look/search their site if they have one.

i have found a feed for pretty much every news site i go to.
if you want i can try export my feeds list and you can import it into newsfire and delete ones you do not want.

maybe we can make a feed link thread

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
...Power User Tip
If you do 'view package contents' by control-clicking the application icon, and go to the resources folder, you'll find a file called 'style.css'. Open this in your favourite CSS editor (erm, like CSSEdit ), and you can significantly customise the way the app displays feeds and stories. I changed the blue mouseover highlight to something more subtle, and changed the font that it uses.

nice, i was reading the forums for this app and he says it is rendered with webkit, and further down the road it will all be user-customizable.

[threestain]

Originally posted by mdc:
i like it a lot.
i stopped using news you can use at version 2.7 since when i took out the dock icon the program would beep every time there was new news.

so far i am liking this program.

NYCU has an option to turn off the sound - you can change it to whatever you like, including nothing

[mdc]

it does, but it would never stay. as soon as i closed the program and reopened it the sound was back. if i put the dock icon on then the sound stayed.

[Millennium]

I've been hearing rumors that this app might be phoning home. Can someone confirm?

[OptimusG4]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I've been hearing rumors that this app might be phoning home. Can someone confirm?

With it being from the same author as Acquisition, I wouldn't be surprised.

[Zimphire]

It has my

[mdc]

Originally posted by OptimusG4:
With it being from the same author as Acquisition, I wouldn't be surprised.

i do not mean to attack you by saying this, but could you please explain what you mean by that?
does acquisition phone home? is the developer not too trustful? what?

thanks

[iOliverC]

It probably does phone home, it does so to check for updates I believe.

No way to turn this off yet, I believe anyway.

[TimmyDee51]

Little Snitch did catch the app sending something out on port 80, but I don't remember the IP. When I get home, I'll delete that rule and see what server it's trying to talk to. It might just be trying to access the RSS feeds -- at least that's what I assumed given the port it was using.

[Porfiry]

It downloads this file: http://www.xlife.org/newsfire/vc_version.php to get the current version. Big whoop.

[Porfiry]

I should note that Acquisition has a user preference to turn off version checking. Any comments about Acquisition phoning-home are pure FUD. NewsFire doesn't yet have such a preference because.... well, just look at the version #.

[Lancer409]

testing it out atm .. seems cool .. rss is new to me ...

[Lancer409]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I've been hearing rumors that this app might be phoning home. Can someone confirm?

hmm ... i'm less disturbed by this considering i still have a pc in my house... hehehe

[Mithras]

Tried it, not bad. I like the purty appearance.

But I'll wait until it has a "three pane" interface, so I can read the article just by selecting it in the list, rather than explicitly click forward and back. Like in NetNewsWire:

[mdc]

the developer has said he does not want to create a 3 pane view.

[ratlater]

I really like the current interface over the 3 pane view. It allows me to keep the window nice and small and let's me focus on the article. Very nice app for .21.

-matt

[Millennium]

Originally posted by mdc:
the developer has said he does not want to create a 3 pane view.

Perhaps something similar to the venerable Claris Emailer would be better, then? When you double-click on an article in the list, a window with Back/Forward buttons pops up. This lets you view the article while using the Back/Forward buttons to cycle through the list, plus you can open more windows from the list if you want.

This would preserve the current two-pane window while solving its modality problems.