I might be missing something obvious, but it seems to be more difficult than necessary to organize subscriptions in NetNewsWire. I've got 377 feeds, and sometimes I need to go into my subscriptions list to find stuff, rather than just living in the "New Items" folder (where I do spend about 98% of my time in NNW).
One problem I'm having is that there doesn't seem to be a "list all subscriptions" view. I can use Smart Lists to list blog posts, but I can't seem to list all subscriptions anywhere.
Also, I can only put each subscription in one (and only one) folder. That can be a problem. Yes, I can make folder hierarchies, but what do I do with a subscription like Brian? His blog could go in any of the following folders, but they don't fit into a hierarchy, so I have to choose...
- eLearning
- campus bloggers
- canadian bloggers
- northernvoice attendees
- friends
- careo users
- xserve owners
- new parents
So? Which one folder would he go into? Back when I was using Shrook, it had some really nice subscription management features. It was modeled more after iTunes than Mail. All subscriptions were in a "Library", and I could manually drag them to folders, and I could make Smart Folders to automagically pull subscriptions and feeds together.
Which leaves me stuck. I've got some feeds that I want to update info for, but I have no idea where they are in my subscription folders. And I can't search for subscriptions, only for blog entries. So, how do I append someone's name to their blog subscription title, if I can't find their subscription?
Shrook also has a nice UI innovation that is like a dynamic column view - the leftmost column shifts out of view to make more room for the content I'm trying to read.
If I spend 98% of my time in "New items", why does the subscription folder hierarchy need to take up screen real estate, when what I really want to see is the entry list and post display pane?
Update: Yeah. I just installed the latest version of Shrook, and while I don't plan to switch back, NNW could definitely be improved by the column view and "library" model of subscription management...