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Browsing

NetNewsWire includes browsing features: it displays web pages in a tabbed browser.

You can tell NetNewsWire to open links in its browser or to open links in your default browser (such as Safari, Firefox, or OmniWeb).

Using NetNewsWireÕs browser

When you open a headline or click a link the description pane, the link is opened in a tab in NetNewsWireÕs browser.

Browser screen shot thumbnail

The browser includes forward and back buttonsÑand a ÒgearÓ menu for more commands.

One of the most important commands is Open in Default Browser. This command opens the frontmost page in your default browser.

Another important command is News > Post to Weblog, which sends the URL of the page and any selected text to your weblog editor. (See Weblog Editing for more information.)

You can close a tab clicking the close box or by typing cmd-w.

The first tab is always the News Items tab. Click it to get back to headlines and descriptions.

NetNewsWire remembers your tabs between runs. If you quit with several tabs open, those tabs will exist next time you launch NetNewsWire.

However, NetNewsWire wonÕt automatically open the pages associated with the tabs at startup, since this can take a lot of time and memory, and because crashing bugs in Apple WebKit can cause NetNewsWire to crash on startup. If you want to load the pages for all those tabs, choose Window > Load Unloaded Tabs.

Tabs commands

To open a new, empty tab, choose File > New Tab (or type cmd-T).

Other tab commands are in the Window menu: Close Tab, Close All Tabs, Select Next Tab, Select Previous Tab, and Load Unloaded Tabs. All but the last of these have keyboard shortcuts that match SafariÕs keyboard shortcuts.

Subscribing to feeds

When a page displayed in the browser links to an RSS or Atom feed in the specified way (via a link tag in the head section of the page), then NetNewsWire displays a feed button in the lower-right corner of the window. Click the button to subscribe to the feed for that page.

Settings

You can customize how NetNewsWireÕs browser works. For instance, many people like to read news and open tabs as they goÑthen they go back and read the pages that they opened. This is much easier if you tell NetNewsWire not to select tabs as they are created.

  1. Choose NetNewsWire > Preferences.
  2. Click the Browsing toolbar item.
  3. Near the middle of the window, uncheck the box next to Select new tabs as they are created.

You can also tell NetNewsWire to always show the bar and whether or not to show favicons in tabs.

Note: NetNewsWireÕs browser is not meant to replace your default web browser. ItÕs meant to be convenient and useful, but it doesnÕt have all the features of Safari, Firefox, and so on. This is by design.

This is also why the Open in Default Browser command is important: it gives you a quick way to go from NetNewsWire to your browser. ThereÕs also an Open All Tabs in Default Browser command.

External Browser settings

You can choose to have links open in your default browser instead of in NetNewsWire.

  1. Choose NetNewsWire > Preferences.
  2. Click the Browsing toolbar item.
  3. Near the top of the window, tell NetNewsWire to open links in your default web browser.

You can also specify whether or not your web browser should stay in the background when opening pages.

(See Questions & Answers for help on telling your default browser to open pages in new tabs.)