I’ve been using Apple Mail to read RSS feeds, but the more I’ve added the more annoying it’s gotten to use, and frankly it’s just no good either since Mail can’t display flash/video content (defeating the purpose of using RSS).
After testing some lackluster stand-alone apps, I decided I may just as well use Google Reader. I really hate having to keep it in a tab in my browser though, so I did a little search about offline reading and such and came across a Mac application called Fluid. I’d heard of it before, but never got around to using it. It allows you to make a site-specific browser, meaning you can have your Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, Flickr, etc. as it’s own “application” that you can add to your dock and operates within its own window.
Like all things Google makes though, Google Reader is practical but not particularly pretty. Enter Helvetireader, one of several (1, 2, 3) Swiss style-themed skins that have been all the rage on design blogs lately. While they’re lovely minimalistic designs, they do however commit one cardinal sin that would have legendary Swiss designers rolling in their graves — they turn Switzerland itself into a theme, rather than staying faithful to the minimal Swiss design style. It didn’t take very long before the bright red links and Swiss flag-styled plus sign next to adding an RSS feed got annoying, not the mention the name Helvetireader.
Thankfully, it turned out to be very easy to make the few changes to tone down the Swissness of the Helvetireader skin, so now I have a stand-alone RSS reader that not only looks pretty sweet and simple, but it’s still accessible from anywhere else too thanks to Google. It shouldn’t be too hard to make it look even better with some more tweaking too.
