Hi,
on my phone I often use Newsblur while having no or a very slow internet connections (German trains… ). At the same time, I subscribed to many feeds which don’t offer whole articles as feeds, but only teasers or even just headlines.
So, I often cannot really work through my news items, as I can only read headlines which is too little information for me to decide whether I might want to read an article later or not.
Therefore, I think it would be awesome if there was an option to automatically download text and/or story view of all articles being synced. I know that this will affect my data plan and my battery life but that’s a price I’d eagerly pay.
This feature would make the Newsblur app THE feed reader app for me.
Not sure if you are using iOS or Android, but if you are using the latter, just set the Default View for a given feed to Text, and it will pre-download the Text (and Story) views of new stories for that feed, whenever you have Download Stories enabled.
Thanks for the quick reply. So, you’re saying on Android, this option already exist and I can automatically download both text and story view and read them offline? That’s great!
Actually, I use both (Android on my personal phone and an iPhone as my business phone). So, I would love to see this on iOS as well!
Edit 1: I just tried it and it did not work, or at least not the way I meant it to (sorry, if I used the wrong terms). What I want the app to do is basically load the entire mobile web page (like the view I get in the iOS app when I double tap a story).
On Android, I could only get the original page loaded in the external browser and text mode only when connected to the internet.
Edit 2: Oh, I just noticed, I made a mistake in the title. Of course, I want to download story view. I always mix that up, sorry! Can this be changed?
Ah, I think I just realised something confusing. The Android app lets you view the plain old content of the RSS feed and calls it “Story” mode. It also lets you read the full text of the story that NewsBlur extracts, calling it “Text” mode. The frustrating part is that “Story” view on Android corresponds to what the website now labels the “Feed” view.
The modes corresponding to “Story” and “Original” as used on the website aren’t something the Android app knows how to fetch, you still have to open the story in your browser of choice to see the actual website.
Yes, that seems to be part of the misunderstanding. Why does the wording differ from the webapp to the mobile app?
Of course, “feed” (web)/“story” (mobile) view is downloaded automatically. But as I tried to explain above, that often doesn’t provide enough information for me.
I’m aware now that the Android app isn’t capable of loading mobile websites at all. But I’m not only looking for an option to load websites within the app but also to download them entirely, so they can be read offline. Will this be available in the future?
I’m fixing the confusing use of terminology today.
The Android app can both use and pre-download the “Text” view, which should have the full content of most stories. I use this on a ton of feeds and is what I was originally describing. Give it a shot for your feeds to see if it helps.
As for viewing or downloading original websites, this isn’t something that has been looked into. On Android, we defer the reading of full websites to your browser of choice.
). At the same time, I subscribed to many feeds which don’t offer whole articles as feeds, but only teasers or even just headlines.