Brief FFox pugin reader

Brief

Dec 28, '11 12:27 PM for everyone

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Brief


This is a nice  plug-in for Firefox operating only in higher versions (mine is 8 which is OK )This adds a button on the right top of the browser and produces a  sidebar  on the left of the browser with all subscriptions and  ‘directories’ (groups) 


here is a short cut of the resulted view :
ON the left pane all subscription are shown and onthe rightpane with the  news feeds  mstl sorted by time reverse

 

 

 

Brief in contrast to sage can accept numerous subscriptions and also groups of subscriptions . It can support /import OPML and XML files  (in case you export your subscriptions from g-reader or any other program )

 

 Some of it’s features:

-drag and drop operation in between dirs and feeds (similar to g-reader) though  this is quite harsh to do

-update ,clean ,delete sub or batch feeds and dirs. Also programmed cleanup either by  each feed or even all lists form each feed’s preferences .  

 

Views :  headline , full, read, unread, bookmarked with  sorting by ascending  or descending order (check in on preferences) 

Here is the closeup of the newsbar showing the above functions

 In each feed a mark unread ,  bookmark (star) and ‘delete it’ facility.




And  here is a  snapshot from  the set up menu shwing  the subbed feeds


the global settings,





and  the settings  for each feed :




You can also adjust the  layout of the produced page by using some CSS code again from  the preferences dialog

Bookmarks : as with g-reader  you can ‘star’ feeds with bookmark for later viewing  or for filtering  out the most important from one or all your subs together . The resulted bookmaking goes by feed ascending or descending order no matter if you starred one or more feeds  or groups  as it happens  with g-reader > very nice!. 

 

Speed:  it is very fast reader, considering of course the speed of your internet connection. Generally faster then g-reader is showing the results! 

 

Adding a feed is difficult. You have import it from the preferences  dialog. It happened  to me  to lose temporarily the  feed list once  I made some adjustments  in thexe listsupdate:

to add to the above , new bookmarks can be added with the 'hacking' of the mozilla bookmarks. Add first the subscription on the bookmark listing , then open the bookmark library then drag into the appropriate folder   

 

There are no labels or tags or any other facilities as with g-reader 

Also another important problem is that  does not  retrieve  feeds more than 50 in blogs  with high output (300+ as with engadget gizmodo )

More updates:

MY main Firefox verwsion is  8 . IN a  special news buquet , Brief  does some loopback .
Installed again on an older version 3.6 of firefox and this  problem worked OK . IN this version clicking on a feed , it automatically deletes it from the reader !

Verdict : 6/10  A very good , fast and quite well working plug-in that  covers  my most important requirements. Qould like to see if there is a further  ability to include sharing (ie to Facebook ) inside the feeds , if not to make feed retrieving available (possibly only by CSS code???)