This article looks at all of the RSS news readers available for Firefox.
Mozilla's Firefox browser includes a built-in capability (Live Bookmarks) for working with news feeds. However, there are numerous news reading extensions available that provide a full range of additional capabilities, from "just the basics" to options for managing and using collections of news feeds.
First, a few words about news feeds, which are a relatively new option on many Web sites. A news feed provides a specially formatted list of current articles, together with summarized article text and other information. The availability of a news feed on a Web site is typically signaled by the presence of a small orange RSS or XML icon. Whether you use it or not, Firefox always signals the presence of a news feed on a Web page by displaying a Live Bookmark icon.
To use a site's news feed effectively, you need a news reader to display the information. The news readers reviewed here fall into three broad categories: The lightweights, which provide only basic news reading features; the heavyweights, for managing larger news feed collections; and specialty news readers designed for a specific type of news feed. All are available via the Firefox extensions option, or directly at the News Reading Extensions Web page.
