NetNewsWire stylesheets make RSS feeds more fun

The Ollicle Reflex stylesheet adds interesting flexibility to NetNewsWire RSS reader. Use different styles for photo and text feeds.

I subscribe to quite a few RSS feeds, often reading them on my Mac with NetNewsWire (NNW). If I don’t read them there, then I’m using NetNewsWire on my iPod touch. One thing I find very handy is that the feeds are synchronised through Newsgator Online, so it doesn’t matter which device I use for reading the feeds, provided I remember to initiate a synch before turning off.

There are many features I love about NNW on my Mac, but one of my favourites is actually supplied by a free third-party stylesheet, Ollicle Reflex:

A stylesheet for NetNewsWire which optimises your feed reading experience with clean typography, clever CSS and crafty JavaScript.

The feeds I read fall broadly into two categories: those that are mainly text, and those that are mainly pictures, such as photos or cartoons.

When I read text I usually want black text on a white background, while photos and other images tend to look best when set against black. I don’t much care for reading pale text on a dark background.

Ollicle Reflex allows me to choose how each feed appears, and to change things on the fly. It also has a cunning zoom feature that fits images to the width of the reading pane. That means less sideways scrolling for images where the overall size doesn’t matter too much.

On the other hand, if I want to enlarge an image to its full size, all I have to do is drag the reading pane wider (and maybe reselect Ollicle Reflex to trigger the zoom).

The screenshots show an item from the Run Spot Run photo gallery with the default NNW stylesheet (top screenshot); against a white background (below left); against a black background, with the style selector still visible (below right). In this feed only thumbnail images are included. Note the NNW style selector visible at the bottom of the window.