I use Google Reader for all of my RSS feeds. I have decided to venture outside of the usual browser and check out the various desktop newsreaders available. So, this week, I am focusing on some of the best readers.
Starting the list is NetNewsWire 3.1.7 by NewsGator (NNW for short). This is a really good reader, in fact it is top on the list. It has an easy-to-use interface and syncs with Google Reader.

PREFERENCES

General:

Reading Tab: Here is where you would decide if you want to show unread count on your Dock icon, choose how to display Updated items, like Mark as unread or Highlight differences. Also, you can decide if you want to collapse new items in Combined View layout or choose how many items to show per page.

Archiving Tab: You would choose to save news items as HTML files on your disk from here and decide how long to keep new items in NetNewsWire.

Browsing:

Behavior Tab: This is where you choose to open links. Your default browser or the NetNewsWire browser, among other items (see image).

News Items Tab: You can enable plug-ins, java, and JavaScript from here and choose your style sheet.
Web Pages Tab:  Again, you can choose to enable plug-ins, Java and JavaScript along with using a custom style sheet.

Colors:

You can change the colors in this section. It’s pretty self explanatory.

Fonts:

General Tab: Here is where you change the subscription, headlines, summaries, datelines and combined view title fonts.
News Items Tab: Choose the standard and fixed-width fonts and the minimum font size here.
Web Pages Tab: Again, you can change the standard and fixed-width fonts along with the minimum font size.

Posting:

This is where you change your settings to post to your weblog and Delicious. For posting to a weblog, you can choose your own application. For posting to Delicious, it offers you the choice to pick from the default browser, NetNewsWire, Cocoalicious, Postr, Pukka, or WebnoteHappy.

Downloading:

Feeds Tab: Change how often to refresh all subscriptions and concurrent downloads.
Enclosures Tab: Decide if you want to automatically download podcasts and add to the iTunes library or other enclosure settings in this tab.
Adding to iTunes Tab: You decide how your audio enclosure will be added to your iTunes library from here.
Downloads Folder Tab: This is where you set the folder for downloads to be sent.

Syncing:

Have NetNewsWire Sync with Google Reader by entering your Google Username/Password and merge the subscriptions.

ADDING FEED SUBSCRIPTIONS

If NetNewsWire is your default RSS reader, you can add a feed by clicking on the RSS icon in the address bar. You can add feeds to NetNewsWire by clicking on the RSS icon in the web site. Another way is to copy the link in your browsers address bar and click the ‘+’ (Subscribe) button in NetNewsWire to add the desired feed.

SPECIAL SUBSCRIPTIONS

NetNewsWire gives you the option to add Special Subscriptions. Your options are Search Engine, Tag, Local File, or Script. (I only tried out the Search Engine and Tag subscriptions.) Here is how it worked for me:

I clicked on File<New Subscription<Search Engine and typed in Apple and chose Yahoo from the choices offered (Blogdigger, Twitter, or Yahoo) and hit Subscribe. NetNewsWire brought up News articles about Apple from Yahoo and saved it as its own feed.
Then, I clicked on File<New Subscription<Tag and typed in geektool and selected from the choiced offered (Delicious, Flickr, and Technorati) and hit subscribe. NetNewsWire brought up all pictures with geektool as a tag and saved it as its own feed. Pretty cool.

PODCASTS

If you subscribe to feeds that contain podcasts, NetNewsWire allows you to either download the podcast to iTunes or to your designated download folder (to play on your own player). Here are a few of the sites that I get podcast feeds from:

http://www.podcastalley.com/
http://www.jordomedia.com/
http://www.podfeed.net/
http://podcast.com/

You would subscribe to these feeds just like you would a normal feed.

VIEWING YOUR RSS FEEDS

When you first open NetNewsWire, you will see the feeds displayed in a list on the left, along with the number of unread articles displayed next to each feed. When you select a feed, the panel to the right displays the articles in that feed. By default, the unread articles will appear bold. When you select an article, you will see either a summary, then entire article, or nothing (depending on the feed) in the panel to the right which is your preview area.

READING ARTICLES

When you double click on an article, it will open the full article on the feed’s Web site, which you can view in either your preferred browser or within NetNewsWire’s build in web browser. (You can decide which browser to use in the preferences.) You will also see tabs that can appear at either the top of the browsing area or as a thumbnail on the right side of the window, depending on your personal preference.
Another nice feature is the ability to use your keyboard’s arrow keys to browse your feeds. The left and right arrows move between the subscription and article lists. The up and down arrows are used to select a subscription or an article. Pressing return opens the selected article.

VIEWING FEEDS AVAILABLE FROM THE DOCK

When you right click on the dock icon, you be given a view of the unread count at the top, the option to Refresh All News, Mark All News as Read, Subscribe…, View items inside your Feed Folders, among the usual dock options. When you highlight a folder, the feeds available will be displayed. Hit your return key and it will open the item in the NetNewsWire browser (unless you have your preferred browser as default).

INLINE SUMMARIES AND DATELINES

You can choose to show summaries and datelines in the headlines to make going through your feeds faster. To do this, simply go to the menu bar and click on View<Layout and you can choose to show Summaries In-Line, Show Summaries Below Title or Show Datelines.

VERSATILE HEADLINE LIST

You can add date, subject, and creator columns to the headlines list and sort them however you choose. To do this, just go to the menu bar and click on View<Columns and choose from Source, Date, Subject, Creator or all of them. It’s your reader, so you can tweak it to suit your needs.

SORTING

You have a variety of sorting options.
To sort your list, you go to View<Sort By and then your options are Date, Source, Subject, Creator, Title or Arrival Order.
You also have the option to sort your subscriptions. You do this by choosing View<Sort Subscriptions By and then your choices are Name, Unread Count, Attention, Last Update, Manual Order or Sort Inside Folders Only.

SMART LISTS

Using smart lists are similar to your Finders Smart Folders or the Smart Playlists in iTunes. To create a Smart List, just click on the cog wheel located on the bottom left hand corner, you will then see a menu. Scroll up and click on ‘New Smart List.‘  A window will pop up for you to start creating your own Smart List. First, type in a name for you Smart List. Then you will go to the first drop down menu and choose from the following options: “Title, Description, or Summary,” “Title,” “Description,” “Summary,” “Link,” “Permalink,” “Creator,” “Subject,” “Comments URL,” “Flagged Status,” “Read Status,” “Followed Status,” “Subscription Name,” “Subscription Feed URL,” “Subscription Home URL,” “Enclosure URL,” “Enclosure Type,” and “Group Name.” After you choose the setting you desire, you will go to the next drop down menu and choose from the following: contains, does not contain, is, is not, starts with, or ends with. Then, if you want, you can add more settings by clicking the ‘+’ sign and go through the same drop down menus until you have the Smart List you desire. NOTE: You can also create a new Smart List by going to File<New Smart List or use the keyboard shortcut Option+Command+N.

FLAGGED ITEMS

You can flag items in several different ways. One way is to have the article you want to flag open. You can either go to the menu bar and click on News<Mark<As Flagged OR use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Command+L OR right click on the article in the article list and click on ‘Mark as Flagged’ OR customize the toolbar and place the Flag in the toolbar for one-click access.
What is cool about flagging items is that they stay forever or can be removed once you mark them as unflagged.

CLIPPINGS

Clippings provide special folders for ‘storing’ articles you want to read later. When you’re viewing an article that you want to clip, just click on the Add To Clippings button (if it isn’t in your toolbar, you can add it by customizing your toolbar), or by pressing Command+Option+S. or just drag the article to the Clippings folder.

LAYOUTS

You can view your feeds articles in either the Traditional view where the preview area appears below the article list (sort of like Mail’s email preview), Widescreen view where the preview is on the right, and finally, a Combined view, which display each article below its title in a scrolling list.

TABS

When viewing articles in tab view, you can choose to have vertical tabs with the thumbnails or the horizontal tabs (no thumbnails).

STYLES

You can choose from dozens of visual themes that determine how articles are displayed within NetNewsWire from fonts and font sizes, layouts, colors, and more.

POSTING TO WEBLOG

NetNewsWire makes it easy to post to a weblog. The first thing you would want to do is choose which weblog you prefer to use. You do this in the Preferences under Posting. You can either use MarsEdit or you can choose whatever desktop weblog application you have. Then, after making sure your settings are the way you want it, choose the article you want to write about by hitting the return key to open the article in the browser and then you click on the Post to Weblog button in the toolbar. From your weblog application, you can make changes as necessary. If you just click on add to weblog without opening the article, it will open the link along with the summary in your weblog application.

SYNCING

The selling point for NetNewsWire is the ability to sync with Google Reader. Not to mention, that if you have NetNewsWire on your iPhone/iPod Touch, you can sync with those as well.

TRACKING CHANGES

NetNewsWire has the ability to track changes when articles are updated. If a site creates a new version of an article, any deletions are displayed with a red strikethrough type and the new additions are displayed in green.

REPORTS

You can view reports that show how much time you give to a feed and which feeds haven’t been updated (which you can decide the timeframe for the report), to help you decide which feeds are worth keeping and which are out the door. To do this, you go to Window and click on either Dinosaurs, Most Attention, Least Attention or Bandwidth Stats (they are all in the same pop up window). Once the (Dinosaur tab) window is displayed, you can change the number of days for feeds that haven’t been updated by just typing in a number. To view the most/least attention, just click on the Attention tab and then you can sort the list by clicking on the Score column (with the arrow on it).In the Bandwidth Stats tab, you can view the results any way you want by clicking on any of the column headers. At the bottom of all the tabbed windows, you have the option to Open Home Page, Reveal in Subscriptions or Unsubscribe.

SCRIPTING

If you know how to create a script (AppleScript, Perl, Python, or shell) that generates an RSS feed, a Script subscription will periodically run the script and display its results. I am unfortunately not that script-savvy so I do not know how this function works.

AD-FREE VERSION OR FREE

You can pay for an ad-free version (which I believe is $14.95) or try NetNewsWire for free which has all the features as the paid version with the exception of a small ad on in the lower left side corner of your screen. You can get your copy by clicking on the icon or go to http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/ for the download and more information.

IPHONE APPLICATION

There are two versions for the iPhone. The paid version, which is $4.99 or the FREE version (which I use).

I have compiled a table of the keyboard shortcuts available for download. Click the PDF icon to download.

Even though NetNewsWire has a few things to learn about, it is a really useful tool. My favorite features are that it syncs with both Google Reader and my iPhone, I like that I can use my keyboard throughout the interface, it has many useful tools like setting up folders, along with the smart folders and much more. This is by far my favorite desktop reader application. If anybody out there wants to share their experiences and tips about NetNewsWire, please leave a comment and share the wealth with our fellow readers.