4 ms·
Not sure if it's just me, but I have not used a RSS reader as a serious reading software for years. Instead, I only use a RSS reader software to quickly go thro
by zzyzxd 4y ago
Not sure if it's just me, but I have not used a RSS reader as a serious reading software for years. Instead, I only use a RSS reader software to quickly go through all the unread items and send interesting articles to a read-later or bookmark service. The main reasons are:
- Some feeds only provide title/summary and not the full text article (yes, I know there are full-text extraction service, but last time I tried them, none of them was perfect, and I don't want to play the guessing game -- "Am I reading the full article, or a broken extraction?")
- Some feeds are just better to be read in a web browser. e.g.: Project release notes on GitHub, which usually come with links to PRs, commits...etc, so I need to open several browser tabs to consume the content anyways.
- Some personal blog sites have very beautiful (or interesting) designs that I find myself actually enjoys poking around.
- Ad-blocking -- given the current popularity of RSS, I don't know if it really makes sense financially for websites to do so, but I notice some feeds do inject ads.
- If I ever need to click a link in an article, jumping from a reader software to a browser is too big of a context switch that disrupts my flow -- just let me go through all the feeds right now, and I will decide how to prioritize the most interesting ones and allocate my reading time later.
For my use cases, Unread on iOS gave me the best experience. All the gestures optimized for single-hand operations are just fantastic. Sadly, they switched from one-time payment to monthly subscription and I can't justify the cost when I only use it in a very light way(just for sorting items). Reeder is not as good, but is comfortable enough for me.
- Moustache6471 4y agoSame here. Currently I don't read my feeds in the RSS reader, but I mark what interests me and send it to Pocket to read later in this application or directly on the original website.
- kgwxd 4y ago> I have not used a RSS reader as a serious reading software for years Same here but I think we were mostly forced into it. Site owners care more about getting you on their site than the quality of the content. There's no incentive to include a bare bones version for RSS so, if they even have an RSS feed, it's just links. Aggregate sites can't even include the content. Also, there's just too much multimedia content these days, a proper browser will always be more reliable for viewing it. I really don't mind it. I just love not having to re-scan over headlines I've already seen or intentionally skipped over.