15 Tips: NetNewsWire

I haven’t posted a 15 Tips article in a while, so I thought I’d contribute some tips for an application I use a couple of times a day.

First off, let me say that I’m without doubt a die hard Mac user. I usually remain devoted to Apple applications over similar third party applications because for the most part they’re reliable and easy to use . But in terms of RSS feeds, I, like many other readers, quickly grew out of Safari’s RSS feed feature. Safari’s RSS feed feature is a nice set up; that is, if you only subscribe to handful of feeds that you might visit when you have nothing else to do.

But when most of your web serving comes through  two or three dozen RSS feeds, you need an application that will get you around and through feeds as fast as possible. I have something like a 105 feeds that I subscribe to and check out on a regular basis. It’s only with NetNewsWire that I’m able to stay abreast of the news that is important to me.

So here are my 15 tips for using NetNewsWire.

1. First off, if you’re in front of the computer most of the day, or your eye sight may not be as strong as you like, go to Preferences in NetNewsWire and change the default size and/font sittings for your Subscriptions, Headlines, Summaries, and Datelines. There’s no use squinting your eyes when you’re browsing through 80 more feed headlines at a time.

2. If you’re finding yourself spending too much time opening NetNewWire instead of doing other required work, again go to Preferences>Downloading and change the time that NetNewWire refreshes your subscriptions. Mine is set for every four hours, which means I’m opening NetNewWire only about two or three times per day. You can also do a manual refresh if you need a quick update on certain sites.

3. I could suggest more Preference features but I suggest carefully looking through all the features in NetNewsWire’s Preferences and choose what works best for you. I do that for all my applications. You might have to revisit Preferences several times until you get it to reflect your workflow. If for example you don’t find yourself ever using the tab bar in NetNewsWire, disable it under Browsing. I find that disabling some features helps make the application function faster.

4. Another quick way to get through feeds is sort them by Appearance of Feeds. Choose View>Sort by>Arrival Order. That way you get an hiearchal display of your feeds based on the number of feed headlines you haven’t read.

5. Organize your Subscriptions into folders. Most of the time I find that I don’t even have to open most folders unless I need to view a particular site. Clicking on a folder of Apple related subscriptions typically delivers anywhere from 40-60 headlines at a time. So you might break down your Apple related feeds into two sets of folders: one for your favorite Apple related sites, and one for those sites that don’t seem to update on a daily basis.

6. If you find yourself opening several pages from NetNewsWire (NNW), you might consider having your selected pages open in the background on Safari or Firfox. I didn’t know this for a while, but you can have links selected

from other applications to open up in Safari or Firefox in a tab format. By doing this, you can simply browse your RSS feed headlines in NNW, select the links you want to read further and then tab through them in your browser. This way you don’t have a bunch of browser windows open and you provide a structured way to get though reading material. This article (http://dmiessler.com/archives/416) goes into more detail about this approach.

7. Flag articles to read later. I use often use this feature, but I don’t find it as useful as it could be. When you flag an article, you simply get an ever growing list of tagged items. You can’t can’t tag or keyword your flagged items or categorize them into folders. But it’s a handy feature if you know you’ll want to revisit that an item for any reason.

8. Speaking of folders, you should know that you can create folders (File>New Group) to group similar feeds together. But also very useful is the Smart List feature in which you can configure for particular types of searches. For example, I created one that picks up article headline feeds that contain “iPhoto” and another one containing “MacBook Pro”. Using this feature, I can keep tabs on specific topics that I’m researching or want to make sure I remain current about. Like Apple’s Smart Folders, I’m finding that NNW’s Smart list feature can save me time and keep me focused when surfing the web. This feature of course can be found under File>New Smart List.

9. You can also sync your NNW RSS feeds between two or more computers. Go under Preferences>Syncing. You have to be signed up on NewsGator in order to create the sync. I thought this feature would be handy for when I go back and forth between my desktop and laptop, but I’ve personally found it’s better to read my feeds on just one computer so I don’t have any overlaps in my browsing and reading of feeds. This feature though will come in handy for when you travel and want to access your feeds. As you’ll we see, you can also sync your NewGator account to your .Mac account.

10. Because I like to change up things from time to time, I really I like the various decorative style sheets for NNW’s news item descriptions.  You can read news items summaries in cute windows like this,

or simple ones like this:

If you have the skills you can even design your own style sheets and post them for others to use.

11. Like other good applications, NNW has its own custom toolbar features and keystrokes. One particular one you might have over looked is the Info feature (Window>I or Command+I.) This feature allows you to customize  individual feeds for how long you would like to retain a feed’s headlines or how often you would like that feed to be refreshed. That time may be different from the update times you have for most of your feeds. So say you subscribed to one of Apple’s discussion feeds that has something to do with a particular problem you’re desperately trying to solve. You can can subscribe to that discussion and have it refresh every 15 minutes or so depending on how fast the discussion is growing and how long you would like to keep up with that particular discussion.

12. I also frequently change the layout of NNW windows. While I don’t use tabbing, I like to switch between Traditional View or Wide View (View>Layout…) for some faster viewing.

13. If you’re overloaded with feeds but still want to remain abreast of what’s going on, let other users show you the way. You can subscribe to services like Digg or now Macitt which are daily lists of many of the most popular articles submitted and voted on by readers who share your interests.  You may decide to replace several of your individual feeds with Digg or Macitt updates so that you’re keeping current but don’t want to be bogged down with checking twenty, thirty, or a hundred feeds a day.

14. If you’re not overloaded with RSS feeds and you just looking for more suggestions, you know can instantly find suggested feeds right within NNW. In NNW’s menu tool bar, there should be a button titled Sites Drawer. Click on it and discover several hundred feeds that span over 50 topics. When you click on a feed, you’ll get a description and a way to subscribe to it by clicking the button at the bottom of the drawer. Personally I try to avoid this drawer. Too much to read already.

15. Lastly, the important tip is one that I constantly have to suggest to myself. If you’re a heavy RSS user and you find that you’re spending more time reading articles than doing other work or play beyond the computer, try simply marking all your feeds as Read even before you read them. That’s right, don’t read them! Click on the New items feature and simply click Mark All As Read. Yes, you may fret about what articles or information you might miss, but your world won’t end because you miss that particular information. My feed traffic, and probably yours, is particularly slow on the weekend, so ignore them. If you must read a few, set up a folder for only the five top essential feeds or topics that you must read because your job, life, and sanity depend on it. The rest, just ignore. Mark as read. Done. None essential. a life beyond the internet choice. It can be done…it’s possible…you can do it. It’s Command+K. Marked as Read. Do something else with your time. Done.