Vienna Editor's Review

Vienna is a Mac OS X RSS reader with support for RSS/Atom feeds, article storage, and management via a SQLite database.

This reader has impressed me from the beginning. It has a well-structured interface and it's very intuitive.

In order to test its functionality I made a subscription to the Soft32 Mac software section and it performed well. All I did was to add the URL of the feed and the application fetched it right away.

The program has the support for many sources. It can subscribe to BlogSpot, Xanga, MSN Spaces, Live Journal, as well as subscribe to a local file. Whenever you want to enter a new feed, you can just enter an URL as I did with the Soft32 subscription.

Vienna fetches only the headers of the new items. It gives you some basic information about the selected feed. It also provides hyperlinks to the source sites, one for the selected feed and the other one for the source site itself. The fact that it only fetches the headers isn't a disadvantage because this client has built in a Web browser. It is a fast and compact browser based on the Apple Web Kit. Basically, it's a thin version of Safari.

Since it has built in this browser, the application features a tabbed interface. You can open many feeds within this user interface and it can be used for minimal browsing tasks. The browser lacks couple of the required features for an optimal browsing activity, like the stop button and the new tab button.

I tested the browser's rendering engine out of pure curiosity. It did well, the Acid2 rendering test was 100% correct. I expected from Vienna nothing but perfection, since the Apple Web Kit was the first rendering engine that has taken this test.

Pluses: it has a well designed user interface with a powerful built in browser. It's easy to use and it features subscriptions to many feed sources.

Drawbacks / flaws: the browsing capabilities could be improved a little.

In conclusion: this piece of software is a well done RSS reader because of the built in Web browser which improves the reading of the feeds.

version reviewed: 2.1.0.2108