So, you read the first part of this series and are now excited about the possibility of subscribing to feeds for sites you like. I now propose to give some step-by-step instructions for how to do that, whether you use Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer on Mac OS X or Windows. This article concentrates on the Mac, specifically how to set up and use my free feed reader of choice, NetNewsWire Lite from Newsgator. Over the coming weeks I will be giving advice on how to do something similar using Web-based services, which you can access from anywhere there’s an Internet connection.

The principles of subscribing to a feed

When you want to subscribe to a site, there are three steps you have to take. Keep these in mind and you’ve won half the battle:

1. Find out if the site / section you’re interested in has a feed of some kind;
2. Find out the address of that feed;
3. Give that address to your feed reader to add it to your subscriptions list.

Setting up NetNewsWire Lite

The software I recommend for starting with feeds on the Mac is NetNewsWire Lite from Newsgator. The free ‘Lite’ version will do everything you need. In order to find the free version (and not the trial of the paid-for version), you have to scroll down the middle of that page, looking carefully for the heading ‘Lite Version’. I personally use the paid-for version (NetNewsWire) to take advantage of the opportunity to sync my subscriptions list between multiple computers. NetNewsWire (both the Lite and full versions) is often said to be the best standalone feed reader currently available for the Mac. I have no complaints about it.

Downloading and installing NetNewsWire Lite

Like much Mac software, you download a compressed disk image. Uncompress it by double-clicking on the file you download, which produces a .dmg file (’NetNewsWireLite2.1.1.dmg’ in this case, for the version available at the time of writing). Double-click on that file, which opens the disk image. If you’re using Safari as your Web browser, all this will probably happen automatically.Drag the icon for NetNewsWire Lite from the disk image window in the Finder, and put it in the Applications folder on your hard disk. That’s it: the application’s installed. You can now open it by going to the Applications folder and double-clicking on its icon. You can eject the disk image from the sidebar of the Finder. You can also now delete the .zip and .dmg files you’ve just been using to install your new application.

Running NetNewsWire Lite for the first time

When you first open NetNewsWire Lite (I’ll just call it NNWL from now on), you’ll probably be asked at least two questions: yes, you do want it to be the default reader for feeds, and no, you probably don’t want to set up syncing just yet. You should then be presented with a window which looks something like this picture:

On the left-hand side, below the toolbar, you can see a list of feeds to which NNWL subscribes the first time you run it. Apart from the BBC News site, they’re all fairly techie feeds (with a heavy pro-Mac bias, see!). Each of the feeds’ names is in bold because there are ‘unread’ items contained in that feed: the number in brackets next to each feed’s name shows how many unread items there are. In this instance, we’ve selected to look at the feed for ‘A List Apart’. You can see that there are two unread items, whose titles (headlines) appear on the right-hand side of the screen. By clicking on each of those titles, we can read the articles themselves—from within NNWL—in the panel below the list of headlines. You don’t have to keep the built-in subscriptions! Go ahead and delete them all (or just the ones you don’t want to keep) by clicking on the feed name at the top of the list (in this case, ‘A List Apart’) and shift-clicking on the feed name at the bottom of the list (’Wired News’), and then pressing the delete (backspace) key on your keyboard. You’re asked whether you’re sure you want to unsubscribe from all these feeds—go ahead and click ‘Unsubscribe’, and you’ll be left with an empty feed list. Now you need to fill it up with subscriptions to sites you are really interested in.

Subscribing to feeds from within NetNewsWire Lite

If you know the address of a feed you want to subscribe to (the feed’s specific address, not the site’s address), then you can click on the ‘Subscribe’ button on the toolbar and enter the feed’s address, either by typing it in or by copying-and-pasting. That’s fine if you already know the URL, but what if you don’t? Read on to discover how to find these feeds’ addresses on the Web.

Finding feeds’ addresses on the Web

Imagine this: you’re browsing the Web, and you find a site whose content interests you. How do you know if they’ve got a feed to which you can subscribe? How do you find that feed’s address to give it to NNWL? Well, the answers to those questions differ slightly depending on whether you’re using Safari (the default Web browser on OS X), or Firefox (a popular alternative Web browser). If you’re using another Web browser (there are many available for OS X), then look at the methods used in Safari and Firefox and see if you can work out something comparable in your own browser.

Safari

In Safari, the easiest way to see if the site you’re browsing has an RSS feed is to look at the address bar at the top of the window. If there’s a feed, a blue badge declaring ‘RSS’ appears at the right-hand end of that bar:

If you click on the blue ‘RSS’ badge, Safari will probably think for a moment before switching to NNWL with the feed’s address already filled-in in the ‘Subscribe’ panel. Just click ‘Subscribe’ and the feed will be added to your subscriptions in NNWL. The reason Safari knows to open NNWL is because when you first ran NNWL you clicked ‘Yes’ when it asked you whether it should establish itself as the default reader for feeds. If, however, you didn’t say yes, or for some other reason Safari doesn’t switch to NNWL when you click on the blue ‘RSS’ badge, the situation can be rectified fairly easily. In Safari, go to the Safari application menu (at the top-left of the screen), and select ‘Preferences…’; then choose the ‘RSS’ tab. Under ‘Default RSS Reader’, if NNWL isn’t already listed, choose ‘Select…’ at the bottom of the menu and browse to where NNWL is in your Applications folder. Click ‘Select’, close the Safari Preferences, and you’re good to go.Sometimes when browsing the Web you will find a link to an RSS feed, perhaps without the blue badge appearing in the address bar. If this ever happens, you can just click the link and Safari will switch over to NNWL in the same way with the feed’s address already filled in.

Firefox

Firefox behaves pretty similarly to Safari when it comes to finding feeds’ addresses on the Web, but in order to save yourself hassle later, you have to tell Firefox of NNWL’s existence (and your preference to use NNWL for feeds) beforehand.Go to the Firefox application menu (at the top-left of the screen), and select ‘Preferences…’; then choose the ‘Feeds’ tab. Choose the option to ‘Subscribe to the feed using:’ and then click on the ‘Choose Application…’ button if NNWL isn’t already selected. Browse to where NNWL is in your Applications folder. Click ‘Open’, and close the Firefox Preferences.

When you’re on the hunt for feeds to subscribe to, the first thing to check is the address bar at the top of the window; if it has the special RSS logo (concentric quarter-circles), then the site you’re looking at has an RSS feed associated with it:

Just click on that RSS icon, and Firefox will switch to NNWL, with the feed’s address already filled-in in the ‘Subscribe’ panel. Just click ‘Subscribe’ and the feed will be added to your subscriptions in NNWL. Occasionally a site will offer more than one RSS feed (as my site does), in which case when you click on the RSS icon in the address bar in Firefox, a menu will appear with each of the available feeds—they should have fairly descriptive names, so that you can choose the one you want. If you’re confused about which feed to subscribe to, just give any of them a go to see what comes up in NNWL; you can easily unsubscribe from the one you tried and try one of the others.Sometimes when browsing the Web you will find a link to an RSS feed, perhaps without the RSS icon appearing in the address bar. If this ever happens, you can just click the link and Firefox will switch over to NNWL in the same way with the feed’s address already filled in.

Go forth and subscribe

That’s all for now; I hope that this has been a useful and instructive tutorial. Subscribe to the sites you’re interested in. Why not go and find some sites now you want to subscribe to so that your subscriptions list in NNWL doesn’t look too empty? Why not subscribe to one of the RSS feeds available on this site?Your normal MO from now on would probably be to leave NNWL open whenever you’re connected to the Internet (you can close the window of the application without quitting the application). In NNWL you can adjust how often the application automatically checks the feeds you’ve subscribed to for updated content: just go to the NetNewsWire Lite application menu (at the top-left of the screen), select ‘Preferences…’, and then choose the ‘Downloading’ tab. Choose a suitable interval for the application to check your feeds under the ‘Refresh all subscriptions:’ menu; I vary the setting between one and four hours depending on how I’m feeling.

Whenever NNWL has found new content in your feeds, it will display the number of new items as a badge over its icon in the Dock: if you see any number over the NNWL icon (the globe with the satellite flying overhead), you know there’s new content which might interest you.Fiddle around with the application’s menus to get it working in a way that makes sense to you. I use the ‘Latest News’ service (go to the View menu and tick ‘Show Latest News Subscription’) when browsing through new content; that way, all the unread items are gathered together at once for me to quickly go through. If you want to open a news-item in your Web browser, you can double click on its headline in the list, or if you’re using the keyboard, just press the right arrow.Have fun, and I hope that you find this all a productive and useful way to keep up with your favourite sites. Confused about anything I’ve written here? Write a comment below and I’ll try to help you out.