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Sage Feed Reader for Firefox Saturday 2006-02-18

Ever wanted to have a feed reader integrated in your web browser? I know I do! Remember the combined email and news reader in Netscape Communicator? I liked the idea, but the communicator was a bloated son of .. erm, a resource demanding piece of software. When I installed Firefox, I was happy to discover the concept of “Live bookmarks”. In your bookmarks manager you create a folder and mane it “RSS” or whatever you want, preferably under your Bookmarks field folder. That way it sits easily accessible on your bookmarks toolbar. When you want to subscribe to a feed you simply add it to the RSS bookmarks folder.

With one click you open your live bookmarks and get a list of your subscribed feeds. Clicking on a feed you get a list of feeds, and hovering over a feed you get a list of the latest entries in that stream. Clicking an entry you go to its origin, be it a web page or a blog post.
I like it and have used it frequently.

Comes along theSage Feed Reader extension for Firefox. Now that’s something completely different! At least on the surface. The extension installs itself quietly and easily in your sidebar collection.
When you activate Sage, it shows your subscribed feeds in the upper half, and when you select a certain feed, it presents the current list of entries in the lower part of the sidebar. Nothing extraordinary about that

Wat’s new, useful and beautiful is what happens in the browsers presentation area. The current entries to the selected feed are presented in full and organized as pages in the page and in an easily readable format

I am the kind of creature who has lots of software installed on my computer, and I tend to forget I even have them. If I can reach my subscriptions from the browser, I might even come to read them from time to time. From this moment on, I’ll use the Sage for that purpose, and I sure recommend it to anyone listening.

What’s in a name? Well heres what Dictionary.com has to say about Sage:

n.
One venerated for experience, judgment, and wisdom.

adj.
1. Having or exhibiting wisdom and calm judgment.
2. Proceeding from or marked by wisdom and calm judgment: sage advice.
3. Archaic. Serious; solemn.

• Posted in : The Internet, WordPress
• Author : Petit