One more change to come in Firefox 4 is the removal of the RSS icon in the browser’s Awesome Bar (aka the Address Bar).  I am guessing this was done to reduce some of the clutter when it comes to the default look and feel of Firefox 4. The ability that made RSS feed so easy to subscribe to is not gone though.  It has simply been bumped down to being an additional button you can add to the interface.

So how can you add the RSS button into Firefox 4?

1. Right-click on the Navigation Toolbar
2. Choose "Customize…"
3. Locate the RSS button from the selection of icons you can add to the Firefox 4 interface
4. Drag and drop it onto one of the active toolbars

Now, as with most changes – there are a couple of Firefox add-ons that will add the RSS feed back to the Awesome Bar. They are not perfect, but they do the job.

• RSS Icon In Awesombar
• RSS Icon

I wonder if Mozilla is reading some tea leaves that the rest of us do not know about how often people use Firefox’s RSS option? Just remember, you can always subscribe to the Firefox Facts RSS feed anytime, anywhere, at any place!

If you use the built in feed reading capabilities of Firefox, the Live Bookmarks feature, you might be missing the fact that you do not have an organized list of new entries to go through like you would have in a traditional RSS reader.  The Feed Sidebar add-on for Firefox is here to take your Live Bookmarks and display them all in your sidebar.

After you have installed the Feed Sidebar add-on for Firefox, you will gain a new sidebar for feeds in your browser.  This is really intended to be a lightweight extension of the built in RSS capabilities of Firefox.  When you open the sidebar, you will see all the new updates for all the Live Bookmarks you have subscribed to.

Single-clicking on a headline will bring up a little preview of the article in the bottom half of your sidebar, like this:

Double clicking the headline will take you to the page for that item in your main Firefox window.  Once the page has been loaded, it is removed from your list of new headlines you have not checked out yet.

The toolbar buttons across the top of the Feed Sidebar can also:

• Open All in Tabs
• Mark All as Read
• Set maximum age for feed items
• Stop current update
• Reload feeds
• Change update interval (reload button dropdown)

For updates and news, make sure you follow the developer on his own blog found at chrisfinke.com.  Overall, I think this is a great addition to Firefox, and a definite contender for people looking for a lightweight way to keep up with some of the best feeds out there (like the one for Firefox Facts). You can pick up the Feed Sidebar add-on for Firefox at the Firefox Add-ons website.

The Google Reader Watcher add-on is handy to have, because it will check your Google Reader for unread new posts.  You can use this to keep track of how many stories you have yet to read.  Checking Google Reader with this add-on is much more practical than visiting the Google Reader web site several times a day, for those RSS feed addicts out there like me.

Next, I would have to say the Better GReader add-on for Firefox is fantastic for Google Reader fans.

This add-on for Firefox bundles several great Greasemonkey user scripts into one extension.  Better GReader adds useful extra features to Google Reader, like feed favicons, inline article previews, and unread counts in your browser tab.

Want to integrate Google Reader into the Gmail inbox?  If so, check out the Integrated Gmail add-on for Firefox.  It gives you Gmail, Google Calander, Googler Reader, and more all from within your Gmail account.  The most recent revision added:

• Significant Performance Boosts and Reduced Resource Dependence
• (Beta) Google Wave Support
• Native Google Tasks Support
• Schedule Once Meeting Scheduler Integration
• Support for Firefox 3.6

Last but not least, we have Google Redesigned.

Tired of how Google Reader looks?  Want to give it a massive redesign?  This add-on for Firefox gives you a complete redesign of all Google’s most popular services (including Google Reader).

Now, let me know your favorite Firefox extension to use in conjunction with Google Reader.  Is it one of these I mentioned, or do you have another favorite I have yet to check out?  Let me know in the comments.

Also, remember to subscribe to Firefox Facts in Google Reader – cause you’d hate to miss another great collection of tips like this one!

Sage was once one of the more popular RSS feed reading add-ons for Firefox.  However, time went by, years went on and these days it is not making much news.  However, if you still need a lightweight feed reader, there is now Sage-Too.  This is a continuation of the original project to keep it up to date with today’s Firefox browser versions. 

Some of the features include:

• Reads RSS (2.0, 1.0, 0.9x) and Atom feeds
• Feed Discovery
• Integrates with Firefox’s bookmark storage and Live Bookmarks
• Imports and exports OPML feed lists
• Newspaper feed rendering customizable via style sheets
• Technorati and RSS search engine integration

It also has support for the following locales: Argentine Spanish, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish.

As they say in their own words, “It’s got more of what you need and not much of what you don’t.”  You can give it another shot, or take your first trip down lightweight RSS reading road by downloading it on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Also, don’t forget to start your RSS feed collection with the best Firefox feed out there today, http://feeds.feedburner.com/firefoxfacts.  Never leave your RSS feed reader without it!

From here you can change just about any way that Firefox relates to any other file, application or task out there.  Here are a few things I did to speed up my browser usage.

ARCHIVES: For archives (like .zip, .rar, ect) I set the action to “Save File”, that way I can skip Firefox asking me if I would like to open or save that type of file when I download it.

FEEDS: Since I am a Google Reader user when it comes to subscribing to feeds, I changed the Web Feed option from “Preview in Firefox” to “Use Google”.

MP3S: Another fix I like to do here is to set MP3 Format Found from the hijacking QuickTime (which like to take control of everything you do) to “Always Ask” cause sometimes I might want to stream it right there and other times, I might like to download it.

MAILTO: If you use Gmail a lot, you can also setup the mailto links to Use Gmail anytime you click a link that is formatted in that way.

I hope that handful of Application handling in Firefox is handy.  Just one more way Firefox lets you have the ultimate customized web browsing experience, if you you know where to look.

In the address bar, type in about:config, and then hit enter.

At the warning, click the button that says, “I’ll be careful, I promise!”.  Now you are ready to do some configuration changes.  We want to setup a new option though, so right-click anywhere inside of the about:config screen and then go to New > Integer.

For the preference name type in:

browser.bookmarks.livemark_refresh_seconds

Now, for the value, you will need to add your time up by seconds.  For example, if you wanted it to be reloaded every two minutes you would type in 120 (because there are 120 seconds in two minutes).  The smallest number you can put in here is 60 seconds.  If you put in anything lower, Firefox will slap you in the face – and then say, “Oh yeah, you wanted to put in ’60′ right?”.

You can also reload a Live Bookmark manually to by right-clicking it and choosing “Reload Live Bookmark”.  However that isn’t nearly as fun as diving into about:config.

If you believe the front page of Feedly.com, even Leo Laporte tweets, “My new favorite Firefox extension (and home page): Feedly.”.  I have heard about Feedly for a while now (from several sources), so I figured it was time I gave it a shot.  You can pick up the add-on for Firefox via the official Feedly web site or the Firefox Add-ons web site as well. 

The Install of Feedly

The toolbar icon for it is automatically  placed in your navigation toolbar, so I give it a click and it already has me signed in and has found my Google Reader account.  That is pretty cool.  Under social connections, it is asking me if I want to import Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Twitter or Friend Feed.  I handed it Twitter, then watched it work.  Ok, think this thing is up and running!

The Pros of Feedly

• I like the fact it works with Google Reader and Twitter (the only two I tried) right off the bat, with no problems at all.

The Cons of Feedly

• The ad box on the right of the web page layout is HUGE! (conveniently not shown in front page screenshot above).  Here is the huge ad in question.  You can click it to get the actual ad dimensions:

  

• The toolbar icon is ugly and has rough edges
• I had to resize my browser to larger than 1024×768 to see the page correctly (without a horizontal scroll bar).  Should be a more flexible layout.

Final Thoughts on Feedly

I have to say, after spending a little ‘bit of time with Feedly, I just don’t get it.  Why do I need a Firefox extension for this?  Couldn’t they do it all as just a web site that imports things I plug into it?  Now I understand all the social aspects, but it just does not tickle my fancy.

Agree or disagree?  Let me know what you like about Feedly and maybe you might win me over.

Alternative and Different RSS Readers

RSS Ticker – watch as your live bookmarks and scrolls their entries across your screen while you surf.

Simple RSS Reader – When you need to get the news fast, Simple RSS gets you there faster.
With only a few clicks you get your favorite news in your toolbar.

Feed Sidebar – The Feed Sidebar is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that displays the new items from your Live Bookmarks in the sidebar. It works well – as long as you don’t have many feeds to get through.

InfoRSS – The extension installs a small icon (looks like an earth) in the status bar. The headlines are displayed in the beside this icon in the status bar or in a separate bar (top or bottom of the screen).

Editing RSS Tools and Addons

RSS Editor – Edit your own feed with this extension. It delivers a simple desktop RSS editor for casual editing of RSS 2.0 files.

RSS Validator – Once you open the RSS feed into the browser window, you can right click on the page or goto the Tools menu and validate the RSS feed.

Traditional RSS Reading in Firefox

Wizz RSS News Reader – At first I didn’t like Wizz much (fighting the urge to make a joke about “taking” this Wizz anywhere) but it has improved with time. It is fairly powerful, feature rich, well supported and has comprehensive online help for all.

Sage – The oldest and maybe the best of the built in Firefox feed reading clients. It delivers newspaper feed rendering customizable via style sheets. It also does a good job at integrating with with Firefox’s bookmark storage and live bookmarks.

Beatnik – Simple but elegant news reader for RSS and Atom feeds. It is simple. If your looking for neat features and a “wiz bang” interface, this isn’t the extension for you. If you need a feed reader for a dozen feeds or so and you want it built into your browser, you might want to give Beatnik a shot.

NewsFox – NewsFox is an RSS reader for folks who like Thunderbird’s built in RSS reader, but they don’t use that E-mail client.

RSS Reading on the Web (along with some cool tools)

Google Reader Notifier & Google Reader Watcher – Two grade A addons that give you a way to track when your Google Reader updates with new things to read. Pick which one does the best job for you and stick with it.

BlogRovr – It fetches posts from your favorite blogs about anything you’re browsing, and shows you summaries you can open read posts without leaving the web page you were on.

One new extenion RSS feed reader that recently caught my eye was Beatnik. It promises to be a “simple but elegant news reader”. With a description like that whats not to love?

It is simple. If your looking for neat features and a “wiz bang” interface, this isn’t the extension for you. If you need a feed reader for a dozen feeds or so and you want it built into your browser, you might want to give Beatnik a shot.

The Google Reader Watcher does just this. There are several tools out there that help you get more out of Google Reader but this one does the best job ad giving you updates.

This extension will checks your Google Reader for unread feeds and if you have, the plugin will display them on your browser’s statusbar. Keep your feed addiction going and pick up this extension.