RSS Reader

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on February 27, 2009

There's promise in this feed reader, which has a very small footprint, but it ultimately disappoints. RSS Reader's bare-bones interface appears unfinished. It includes a simple feed and a headline listing with an internal browser in a second tab. Both tabs include advertising banners that point to a defunct site.

RSS Reader uses a separate XML file to maintain the list of subscribed feeds. Most users should be able to easily edit the file to add or drop feeds. Delete and Add buttons on the main display also make it easy to update the subscription list one feed at a time. Reading feeds is a quick two-step process. Select a feed from the pull-down list then click a Read button. The app doesn't maintain a list of read articles and must load the feed for each use. Selecting a headline displays the article's raw HTML text. Double-clicking the headline immediately displays the article in the reader's Internet Explorer-based internal browser. We experienced many script errors with the browser and it lacks the usual IE toolbar buttons.

This application doesn't require installation and is less than 100KB of code, but it consumes as much memory as Windows Explorer. Most users will quickly tire of script errors and the irritating broken advertising banner, especially with the number of better functioning freeware options.