For those of you who don't know, I've pretty much found that I've switched to Mozilla's Firefox v0.8 as my full time browser. For me that's a huge change. I've always hated Netscape v4.x—its was buggy as heck, yet people loved it cause it wasn't from Microsoft. I'm not saying IE is anywhere near perfect, but it certainly gave Web Developers a lot more flexibility to build web app that functioned like a traditional desktop app. I started using Firefox when it was known as Firefox and really started to fall in love with it. It loads super fast, has lightning fast rendering and is an all around great browser. If all you're looking for is a browser, I recommend checking out Firefox from Mozilla.org, it doesn't include all the extra fluff that Netscape v6 & 7 have or that the full blown Mozilla has.
Anyway, the main point of this entry was to point out a nice little extension I found for Firefox/Mozilla called RSS Reader Panel. All you need to do to set things up is install it and create a bookmark folder pointing to all the RSS feeds you follow. Next, just hit [ALT][R] (or go to "View > Sidebar > RSS Reader") to bring up your new RSS Sidebar. I like the fact that it pulls up the full URL page when you click on a link. I normally end up wanting to see the entire page anyway. The other thing I love about this plugin is that I no longer have to load another app to check what's new on my RSS feeds.
The only thing I would change would be to provide an option for an additional panel underneath the RSS thread panel for descriptions. Right now mousing over the thread will show the description, but a panel would be nice for those of us who use the keyboard to navigate. This isn't huge anyway since I like to just pull them all up anyway.
One thing I really like about the extension is that you can just drag RSS links right to the sidebar--no cutting and pasting. Very nice!
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