The Bottom Line
Pros
- Headline Viewer comes with a long, self-updating list of neatly organized feeds preset
- Input format flexibility allows Headline Viewer to parse many different sources
- "AutoFlip" takes you from one story to the next automatically
Cons
- Searching is a bit cumbersome, and Headline Viewer lacks virtual folders
- Headline Viewer lags a bit in comfort and ease of use
- Doesn't display the full richness of some feeds
Description
- Headline Viewer aggregates news from RSS feeds and other formats.
- You can organize feeds in folders, and Headline Viewer comes with many preset pre-categorized feeds.
- Headline Viewer has an integrated browser that lets you read stories comfortably.
- You can also have Headline Viewer take you through the news automatically.
- Headline Viewer can announce new headlines with a sound.
- You can customize Headline Viewer's interface with (custom or ready-made) skins.
- Headline Viewer keeps statistics for all subscribed feeds.
- Headline Viewer supports Windows 9x/ME/2000/XP.
Guide Review - Headline Viewer 0.9.8 - RSS News Feed Reader
Not satisfied with merely displaying headlines, Headline Viewer is an almost fully featured RSS news reader. It comes with a huge collection of preset feeds. They are already organized nicely in useful categories, encouraging you to do the same with all feeds you add on your own (Headline Viewer is pretty flexible when it comes to the format the news come in).
Subscribing to feeds is easy via drag-and-drop. Unfortunately, this is not true for most of Headline Viewer's interface. It's also a pity that Headline Viewer does not aggregate all news from all of a category's feeds.
You can have Headline Viewer take you through the headlines automatically, though, loading one after the other at a customizable interval. While Headline Viewer lets you search your feeds, basically, the implementation is less than ideal and Headline Viewer doesn't offer virtual folders that would automatically collect relevant news items.
In general, Headline Viewer is true to its name insofar as flagging, archiving or otherwise using news isn't implemented. Headline Viewer also displays only plain-text item descriptions and doesn't show the rich experience that some RSS feeds have become.
