In the era of Facebook and Twitter it seems that reading news via feed is now old stuff. However, there are many people like me who, to keep up to date on news from favorite blogs and newspapers, instead of opening these sites one by one or looking for them in the wild pile of Twitter to see if there are new articles, still use a program that receives the news as if they were Email messages and allow you to read those that interest you by discarding the others.
For many years that program has been the Google Reader web application which, however, will disappear forever from 1 July 2013.
What seems today its natural replacement and the new tool to read the news coming from the RSS feeds of blogs and newspapers is the Feedly news reader, recommended for all Google Reader orphans and, why not, also for new users.
It is therefore worth reading this guide to Feedly to take advantage of all its functions.
READ ALSO: Best alternatives to Google Reader
Feedly today becomes the best alternative to Google Reader because it is now available as a web app accessible by all browsers for PC, tablet and mobile phones while before it was linked to extensions or applications only for some platforms (i.e. Chrome, Firefox, Android and iPhone) .
Already registered users can go to the Feedly website to read the news flows of the feeds subscribed by the browser without the use of plugins, extensions or applications.
This means that the service can now be accessed using previously unsupported browsers such as Internet Explorer or Opera.
For the time being, Feedly can only be accessed using a Google account, although there will soon be other ways to subscribe to the service.
Those who were already registered will be able to find all their feeds and articles perfectly synchronized in an interface identical to that of the extension.
Before Google Reader closes definitively it is possible to import feeds and special elements into Feedly so that you can continue reading new articles without having to reset everything and lose the old ones that had been kept.
After closing Google Reader, you will have to add the websites to be followed manually by pressing the button on the top left Add content and adding the address of the feed.
For example, to follow Navigaweb.net you need to add the address //feeds.feedburner.com/navigaweb
The news sources can be organized in folders from the top Organize menu.
Any article of interest can be saved by pressing the button in front of the title in Feedly (which was the function of the special elements with the star in Google Reader).
All saved items are found in the " Saved for later " list.
When you open Feedly there are several options for viewing articles.
From the buttons at the top right you can choose to see the list of items such as:
- Titles : it is the most compact format typical of Google Reader, where only the title and a few initial words appear.
- Magazine : thumbnails of the main image, the titles, the publisher and the first paragraph of the article are displayed.
- Cards : a reading mode very similar to that of Google+, where each article is a postcard.
- Complete articles : all articles are displayed in full (or extracted according to how they are delivered).
The side menu on the new Feedly site is hidden when using a small screen and appears by moving the mouse cursor to the left.
From the side menu, at the bottom, you will find access to preferences from which you can choose the default view, customize the graphic aspect and where to enable or disable the advanced functions of Feedly such as, for example, the sharing functions and the mini toolbar.
The main options are:
- Home page: to set the home page with which to open Feedly.
- Default View: for titles, magazines, cards or complete articles.
- Sources without updates: show or hide.
- Recommended articles: to see in the head the most popular articles based on shares in Google+ or Facebook.
- Auto-Mark as read: if you open an entire article, if you scroll or never.
- Optimizer: to choose how often to optimize the recommended items
- Color of open links
- Color of links not yet clicked.
- Integration with Pinterest and Twitter.
- Enable the Feedly Mini toolbar
- Include a Facebook or Twitter feed news in the side area "> IFTTT, make sure that articles saved in Feedly are also saved in parallel services such as Pocket.
See how IFTTT works with the best IFTTT combinations to synchronize web accounts automatically.
Feedly can also be opened on mobile phones and tablets with official applications for Android and for iPhone and iPad or with unofficial apps such as Palabre for Android and Newsify for iPhone and iPad.
You can also read the news of the feeds saved in Feedly from Windows 10 (waiting for an official app) using the NextGen Reader.
In short, although Google Reader has now disappeared from circulation, Feedly is certainly the recommended choice hoping that it will improve in the future and correct its defects.
