Some of the blogs I read have many articles a day (such as The H).
Often I’ll read this in chunks starting with the oldest and working through. I tend to scan the headlines, skipping the articles that do not interest me.
I would like to be able to mark a specific post, and all older posts as read.
Totally possible, but it would need a good way to work. Keyboard shortcut? Mark everything above this line as read? That’s a very advanced feature, so it might have to be a double (x + A, or something).
This is a cool idea, I would use it. Keyboard shortcut is great (I like to be able to work with only keyboard), but something in the right click menu on the story title in story list (conversely, when using my tv I like to be able to just use mouse) would be nice too.
I was thinking that it could be an option in the drop down for the item in the story feed, mark above/below as read, (probably 2 separate buttons there).
Super handy for a deal site feed (like FatWallet, Slickdeals), where you can quickly skim dozens of deal titles and know you don’t need to open them, but you don’t have time right that moment to read the hundred(s) more, but you’d like to mark that you’d noted and discarded interest in all items up to that point.
A keyboard shortcut would be fine, but I’d really like this feature in the iOS app. For instance, in Reeder, there’s a gesture in the list view: two finger swipe up (or down) to say, “Consider this and everything above it read.” That actual gesture was finicky, but on a small screen with a scrolling list (iPhone), that ability was super-useful. The one thing I still miss from Reeder after going to NewsBlur.
I’ve described a related Google Reader feature (pages of 15 items) in my question just now … I think the “Mark until here as read” would also satisfy my need. Great idea, thank you, Chris. And Samuel … I’m hoping this could also come to iOS … maybe by holding an item.