OneFeed Beta
Matt Walters has released OneFeed, an AJAX-based RSS reader. My experiences with it have been excellent (confession: I tested it in the closed alpha stage), and it is one of the better initial release RSS readers I’ve seen.
Users of Bloglines or Outlook will feel right at home. OneFeed uses a three-pane method for displaying feeds, with the left thin pane displaying your feeds, and the rest of the page divided between the feed items at the top and the content at the bottom. You click on a feed, and you can choose to click through individual items, like in an Outlook-based aggregator:
… or read all items at once, like in Bloglines:
This alone should make many consider switching. I like versatility in my software, and the first thing Web 2.0 designers forget is that most users like that as well (which is one of the reasons Windows succeeds in spite of itself). I want the option to use the UI in different ways, and OneFeed lets me do that. Does Bloglines? Not really.
Matt takes feedback and works it in quickly, if possible, so I’d like to suggest user preferences that alter the base UI. How about letting us choose between the current Outlook-standard UI, and the Outlook 2003 vertical pane UI? I’d like to try an online aggregator that did that.
Just a note: Those screenshots are from Opera. How many AJAX apps work in all browsers? Very few. Matt writes code that works in all browsers that is just as good as the code others use that doesn’t.
Other features include OPML import that works in real-time, with real feedback. Google Reader gives no feedback on this. The import took roughly 40 seconds for 150 feeds, and removed duplicates on the fly. It didn’t bother me one bit that InsideGoogle is one of the three default feeds 
Also, you can tag feeds and rate individual items on a five-point star system. Coming features will be a browse-by-tag system and possible Technorati cosmos tracking. I’d like to see keyboard navigation, and the ability to double-click on a feed to read all items, instead of click the +, then “View All Unread” (or a button that does the same). You can also save articles and view them all in a seperate location, a feature I haven’t seen in any other feed reader, and one that is very useful.
The front page currently lists a sampling of articles, and I can imagine a day when the star ratings system is used to create a Memeorandum-type front page. I know Matt has big plans for the system, although what those will be are known only to him.
So, I encourage people to try this out. With the OPML import, there’s no risk, and the AJAX means the page never refreshes (seriously, never. I haven’t seen it once). Unlike many other readers out there, you can contact the developer directly and request new features, and get them if they fit. OneFeed uses a UI that is both familiar and more advanced than most, and doesn’t make the mistakes that plague both new and veteran readers, and for that reason I think a lot of people will like it.
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RSS Goes All Ajaxy on Me with OneFeed
Nathan Weinberg today points to an AJAX-based RSS reader called OneFeed. The aggregator uses a three-paned interface for displaying feeds. One observation here. None of these web-based readers - yet - displays the content you click in a feed within
Trackback by Micro Persuasion | November 30, 2005
Gentleman, A always bad to be second but … yesterday I launched my own AJAX Feed Reader
Just take look please to compare
http://www.newsalloy.com/
Comment by lordtime | November 30, 2005
Now my question is…why on earth do I want to use this or any other feed aggregator, when Firefox does it all for me so far? Sure it’s a wee bit cumbersome, but…
Comment by Rob M | November 30, 2005
[…] Well, overnight OneFeed … went crazy, but in a good way. The number of users has quadrupled (and is still climbing) and the number of feeds being scanned has more then quadrupled. Nathan of BlogNewsChannel reviewed it and Steve Rubel commented on it as well. […]
Pingback by OneFeed » Blog Archive » OneFeed gets some publicity | November 30, 2005
For some reason in Firefox I don’t see the options to read all.
Comment by Jason Schramm | November 30, 2005
Nevermind, now I see it. It was the little plus sign.
Comment by Jason Schramm | November 30, 2005
Okay, I decided to try out Onefeed… I have a .ca domain (because well, I live in Canada), and it won’t let me use that for my email address. Oh well, it IS a beta.
Comment by Rob M | November 30, 2005
It’s still a little buggy but not too bad. If you want to create a link from your blog to add your blog feed to onelink, the URL is
http://www.onefeed.com/ops_feeds.php?feed_url=http://FEEDURL/file.xml&add_feed=1
I’ll mention this on Cyclelicio.us later today. I’m not sure yet what will happen if you try this add_feed function but you’re not logged into OneFeed.
If you get the feed URL wrong it seems to hose things up on OneFeed, which is (unfortunately) indicative of sloppy programming and possible vulnerability to common security exploits.
Comment by Fritz | November 30, 2005
Rob, while Firefox and most browsers can now read RSS feeds, none will ever do it as well as a dedicated client. Its why we have Word, even thought there are browser-based solutions, and its why business users may insist on Outlook when Gmail and Yahoo Mail are so powerful. You should try using an advanced reader, instead of Firefox’s. You might never switch back.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | November 30, 2005
[…] Nathan Weinberg talks about several other reasons OneFeed looks surprisingly good. I can attest to the speed at which Matt is responding to feedback. I uploaded my OPML file today and gave it a try, and immediately found that hotkeys would make the browsing experience a whole lot better (since it would allow users to scroll down through headlines as if they were looking at a single page). He’s already responded and told me that “hotkeys are definitely considered a must-have”. […]
Pingback by BrianShih.com » OneFeed beta RSS reader | November 30, 2005
[…] OneFeed是个使用了Ajax技术的在线RSS阅读器，这里有比较详细的介绍，转两个界面图过来。 […]
Pingback by Rss 油站 » 使用Ajax的RSS阅读器: OneFeed | December 1, 2005
[…] Blog News Channel posts a review article on OneFeed (Online Service), an AJAX-based online RSS reader. I encourage people to try this out. With the OPML import, there’s no risk, and the AJAX means the page never refreshes (seriously, never. I haven’t seen it once). Unlike many other readers out there, you can contact the developer directly and request new features, and get them if they fit. OneFeed uses a UI that is both familiar and more advanced than most, and doesn’t make the mistakes that plague both new and veteran readers, and for that reason I think a lot of people will like it. [Blog News Channel] […]
Pingback by CedLed’s Web » Blog Archive » OneFeed - AJAX-based Online RSS Reader | December 1, 2005
Sorry I’m a little late, things have been blowing up (in a good way) on OneFeed. I have unfortunately had to take the system down for a little while tonight for some maintenance, so if I say anything like “try this” just keep in mind you’ll have to wait for it to come back up.
It’s not sloppy programming and it’s not open to exploits. It’s in beta and you’re trying to force something that wasn’t meant to work that way. When you add a feed, it add’s it (securely) into the database and does an initial scan of the feed. There are occassional bugs in reading in feeds (feed doesn’t respond, feed is invalid for its format, etc there are all kinds of reasons it could fail). Anyhow, just wanted to say your remarks were mighty presumptuous to be honest.
Sorry about that, there was a problem with email validation earlier that I believe I’ve fixed. Give it another shot and let me know if you still have trouble (can leave a comment on the onefeed blog or here, whatever works for you)
Honestly, if it’s not for you then that’s cool, I can understand, we each have our preferences. Personally the main reason that I like online based feed readers is because of their versatility. I have 3 computers that I commonly use. By it being web-based, no matter what computer I’m on, I can get to my feeds and I don’t have to install software on any of the machines, or synch my feeds between different machines. If that’s not valuable to you (which is a completely fair assessment potentially) then cool deal
I admit, before I started moving around so much and tracking so many feeds, I just used Sage in FireFox and was fine and dandy doing that 
Nathan: Thanks for the awesome review, I really appreciate it.
Comment by matt | December 5, 2005
[…] * The Alternate URL in eMiniMalls * World’s Biggest Link List [via Bnox] * GMail Virus Checking * RSS of ALL Google Blogs - Feed : Here * Cuckoo IP - a timed a voice messaging system * Gen Y to marketers : engage us with experiental marketing * Amazon Product Wiki * Windows OneCare Available For All - Sign up here to get it * Philipp’s Super Deluxe Chat Room * GeoNews - Google News on Google Maps * Gtalkr - Flash Web based -not affiliated with Google- Talk * OneFeed, an AJAX-based RSS reader * Fremont Live Vs. Google Base […]
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