RSS Reading Guides, Fresh Apps, and a Plea for Full Feeds
Laura Kalbag has published How to read RSS in 2020, a useful primer for anyone curious about RSS: what it is, what it's for, and how to start using a feed reader. The post includes a pointed critique of truncated feeds:
Sometimes the content is just an excerpt, encouraging you to read the rest of the content on the original site. I think this defeats the point of providing RSS, where a big benefit is that the reader can customise how the posts display in their feed reader to improve their reading experience.
That sentiment resonates with the author's long-running frustration over Khoi Vinh's writing, whose feed has been truncated for as long as anyone can remember—barely even excerpts. Kalbag also highlights lire, a reader the author hadn't encountered before, noted for its solid screenreader support.
Louis Lazaris has his own roundup, Front-end RSS Feeds (2020 Edition), featuring OPML files that bundle large groups of feeds for one-click import into a reader. There's also a plain list for those who prefer manual curation. Lazaris himself is on NewsBlur.
The author remains committed to the Feedbin + NetNewsWire combo, and notes that NetNewsWire for iOS has just shipped. Early impressions are positive, though Reeder still wins on iOS, especially since it syncs smoothly with Feedbin.
One app the author hasn't tried yet is Unread 2 for iOS, but the concept is appealing: it "automatically determines which feeds contain only article summaries" and fetches the full content from the site for you.
