An RSS reader for Windows you can read in ten seconds
Windows has no RSS reader of its own, and most of the ones you can install are three-pane programs built for working through hundreds of unread items. Taskbar RSS Reader is for the other habit: a quick look at the news between tasks. Click its tray icon and a compact front page slides up from the taskbar. Click anywhere else and it gets out of the way.
Each edition is laid out like a paper rather than a list. The newest story that has a picture leads at the top, and up to a dozen more run underneath it in two columns. Across the masthead you get the date, a count of fresh items and the print time of the edition, so you know at a glance whether it is worth reading now.
Stories open in your normal web browser. Nothing is rewritten or scraped; the app shows the headline, summary and picture the feed itself publishes.
Add any RSS or Atom feed and sort it into sections
The paper starts with five general sources split into News, Tech and Science. Change or delete any of them under Settings, in Your feeds. Choose Add a feed, paste an Address, fill in a Name and type a Section, or use Browse feeds to pick from a list of well-known outlets grouped by topic.
Every section you name becomes its own page, and Front page mixes them all. That makes it easy to keep local news apart from tech blogs, or to give a hobby its own page you only open on weekends. Move up and Move down set the order. The reader handles RSS 2.0, Atom and RDF feeds.
An unread count on the taskbar, and a feed widget you can pin
The tray icon carries a count of stories you have not opened, which is the whole point of keeping a reader on the taskbar: you can see whether anything new has come in without clicking. The badge counts up to 9 and then shows 9+. Stories you have opened are dimmed on the page, so new ones stand out. Your reading history is saved, so a restart does not bring old items back as new. Mark all read clears the page you are on.
If you would rather keep the news in view, choose Pin to the desktop. The paper then stays open as a small news feed widget wherever you drag it. Unpin sends it back to the tray.
How often it fetches, and what happens offline
Set Fetch a fresh edition every to 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 hour, or click the masthead to print one immediately. If a feed does not answer, the paper names it and carries on with the rest. With no connection at all, the last edition stays on screen with its print time, so you can still read what was fetched.
Hide adult topics is on from the start. It filters out stories whose headline or summary is about explicit content, which can turn up even in mainstream feeds. Start with Windows keeps the paper waiting in the notification area after you sign in.
