RSS App Review-QooRSS

RSS

RSS (Rich Site Summary)  is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.







Well there are various rss feed apps on the Symbian platform and today I am going to review the QooRSS app.


QooRSS' main function is to provide an RSS widget on the Symbian homescreen. It also has a fully usable application too where you can browse feeds and their contents, and tweak settings.

The QooRSS app is definitely stylish,no doubt about that.The most obvious feature is its semi-transparent background with selectable wallpapers to sit behind. On first launch, the tiny fonts gave cause for concern, but a quick trip into settings to change from small to large soon fixed that problem.

Fonts

Looks Stylish

       


















The tabs mentioned above are, in order: Feeds, Posts, and Content. Given contemporary user interface conventions, one would be forgiven for trying to move from the feed list to viewing a single feed, and then to a single post, by tapping on individual items. Not so in the case of QooRSS. Instead, one has to select the item of interest, then tap the next tab along at the top of the screen. Not only is this counter intuitive, but it requires more interaction with the touch screen. Not so good for me.

The main menu from the feeds list view allows you to add, remove and reorder feeds. When it comes to adding feeds, you can either manually enter a URL or import multiple feeds from a file. The Nokia Store page for QooRSS states that the application can import feeds from both OPML and HTML files. However, QooRSS completely failed to import anything from the files that I tested with it, leaving me to enter URLs manually. More score markdowns here. Even more markdowns to the score come from how QooRSS handles scrolling, Dragging across text selects it, and so scrolling is done by dragging a scroll bar which is -wait for it -  invisble!



The widget itself shows the title of the feed you've put at the top of the feeds list (in the application) plus the three most recent stories. There's also an RSS icon on the left, which reloads your feeds when tapped.

This app looks outdated really and since this is a paid app( you can get it at the Nokia Store for £1.00.)it really doesnt satisfy me.Besides, anyone with a Symbian device should now have the scrolling RSS widget, either via the Homescreen Widgets application update, or firmware updates to Belle Refresh or Belle Feature Pack 2.