At the moment, Google Reader seems to be the best feed reader out there. You can add as many tags as you want to a feed, search for subscriptions inside the reader and preview posts without having to open them. You can’t beat Google search capabilities.
Here’s a tip for those of you that have decided to make the switch from Firefox Live Bookmarks to Google Reader. We’ve found a little Firefox extension, OPML Support, that will give Export/Import capabilities to the Firefox Bookmarks Manager for OPML files. It’s fairly easy to transfer your Firefox Live Bookmarks to your Google Reader, just follow these steps:
- Install the OPML Support extension and restart your Firefox
- In Firefox, click ‘Organize Bookmarks’ in the Bookmarks tab at the top – this opens up the Bookmarks Manager
- In the Bookmarks Manager, click ‘File’, ‘Export’, then ‘OPML’-this will open up the OPML Support window
- At the top, where it says ‘What do you want to export?’ you should select Livemarks
- Don’t click ‘Export livemarks as bookmarks’
- If you want to use Firefox folder names as tags in Google reader, select ‘Maintain folder structure when exporting’. If you choose ‘Export links without folder data’ you’ll have to tag all your imported links in Google Reader
- It’s a good idea to click the box ‘Remove possibly invalid characters from titles and descriptions’ – this will clean up your feed titles a bit
- Click OK and select a good location to save the Export file
Ok, that’s all you need to do in Firefox. Now open up your Google Reader and click on the ‘Import/Export’ tab in ‘Settings’. All you’ll have to do is browse for the OPML file and upload it. Depending on whether you’ve kept the folder structure while exporting or not, you probably will have to do a bit of cleaning up, erasing tags, moving your new feeds in categories and deleting obsolete ones. After that you’re set to go with Google Reader!
