Today I read the article about the Firefox add-on Brief which is an RSS reader for Firefox making use of Firefox’s dynamic bookmarks. I have never used the dynamic bookmarks before, always an external application or web service that would display the RSS feeds that I have a subscription for. When thinking about it it did make sense to integrate the RSS feeds into Firefox directly which would make them independent of any web service. Netvibes, the service that I have been using for about a year, is having some technical difficulties lately and I have decided to give other integrated systems a try.
The first thing I did was to backup my opml information at Netvibes. These file contains information about all feeds that I’m subscribed to. The option was a bit hidden in Netvibes, you find it in the profile section under Feeds. Then I realized that Firefox had no option to import an opml file directly which meant I had to find an add-on that would import the opml file for me.
OPML Support is an add-on for Firefox that adds this functionality to the Bookmarks Manager. It provides an export and import option for opml files. This made it easy to transfer my RSS feeds from Netvibes into Firefox Live Bookmarks giving me the opportunity to finally test the RSS reader add-on Brief for Firefox.
Related posts:
How to export live bookmarks in FirefoxMy first experience with the Firefox RSS Reader Brief
Google Reader vs. Netvibes
How to migrate from Internet Explorer to Firefox
Personalized Desktop News Feeds
Sort Subscriptions Alphabetically in Google Reader
Check For Dead Bookmarks in Firefox 3
Save Firefox Bookmark Searches
As a sidenote, Brief also offers full OPML support, so you may not need the OPML Support-Extension, though it may prove useful from time to time.
The best Firefox Extension out there. I use this every day, and I Highly recommend it for anyone using the not-so-great Google Reader, or netvibes.
This is highly customizable and really easy to read all of your feeds offline at your leisure.
5-star RSS/ATOM/JSON/XML reader (yes, it supports all media types – even mediaRSS).
I tried Brief before and I didn’t like it I prefer Newsfox which is a full-featured rss reader inside firefox.