Library clips

The new Attensa Online is a great light weight RSS Reader, it’s only new, so no doubt there will be some power features coming later on.

What I like about it is the different ways you can view your feeds, and marking read/unread…it attacks these simple features better than any reader I’ve seen so far…although it does lack a clippings folder at the moment.

MANAGE

Can’t manually sort order of feeds

Can have sub-category

Can only import OPML files

Built in feed directory, or add manually

Lacks a check all feature, I loaded in an OPML then it asked which of these feeds I wanted for subscription, I wanted all of them, but had to check every box, apparently this is being seen to.

Synching, across it’s range of RSS Readers, like Newsgator

READING

River of News or by feed

The different reading views of Attensa is where it shines

2 PANES

- Title index
(clicking on a title will launch to the native post)

- Excerpt index
(clicking on a title will launch to the native post)

_ Full-text
(read the full post within Attensa)

3 PANES

- Title index
(clicking on an item will show full post in the 3rd pane underneath)

- Excerpt index
(clicking on an item will show full post in the 3rd pane underneath)

Also the 3 pane view has a choice of the post in the 3rd pane showing the RSS version of the post, or the web version (actual native post).

I really like that I can read from the actual blog post within my RSS Reader (if you don’t mind the load time).

READ/UNREAD

When you click on a post is greys out (this marks it as read).
You can also mark all posts as read.
You can even delete a post or all posts.
To mark a read post as unread again just tick it.

If you right click on a title you can you can mark a post as read, unread, delete it, or email it.

You can also right click on your subscriptions and folders: mark all read, mark all unread, delete articles, delete subscription, or delete category.

At the moment I don’t see any personalisation, or clipping features, but it is a great start.

The important thing is organising my feeds, viewing them, and marking them, and Attensa covers the basics much better than Rojo or Bloglines.

The gripe with Bloglines, is that it doesn’t have a River of News, and instead of marking a post as unread you have to tick it to keep it new (this is a kind of a round about way of doing this)

Also when you want to mark the feed you are reading as unread (Mark as Unread), it will keep all the posts unread, whereas you might of read at least some of them.

Read here for my Rojo woes.

Bloglines has great feed management, Newsgator Online is OK, and Rojo is just a super RSS Reader, but it does have many fundamental flaws…and Attensa has the best views, marking features, synching and right click action (just like Newsgator Online).

LACKS

OPML URL import

RSS feeds for folders, and whole account

Searching

Tags instead of folders, so feeds can live in multiple places

OPML URL for each folder or the whole account

No personalisation
(Recommendation, relevancy, etc…)

Threading

Key Navigation

Clippings

Don’t really need flagging, as you can keep a single post as unread, although flagging is good when all flagged items are kept in a folder

What I like about Rojo is that you can skim all you subscriptions, flagging as you go along, then goto your flagged folder and read in peace (what I mean by peace, is that there is no skimming, you can enjoy the seamless experience of reading every single article…you have already done the hunting and gathering).

I really think Attensa Online will have a great take up with new RSS users, as it is similar to the email view, and very intuitive to use, and it is not overloaded with too many features.

Check out the forums, where’s the feed…also I’m notified of replies to my posts, but what about new posts.