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Novobot

is a smart headline grabber capable of extracting headlines from almost any web page, as well as from various XML-based newsfeed channels.

What if you could see all the news in one place? What if you could read your news feeds just as you read a newspaper, article after article, and quickly browse through headlines and content without wasting too much clicks? And when you get distracted, what if you could continue reading from where you left off, even offline? What if you could squeeze all the headlines into one scrolling ticker and place it somewhere on your screen to always be at a glance? What if you could have all the latest news ready for you when you come to work in the morning?

With Novobot, you can do all this, and much more.

The Web is news with Novobot! It is a smart headline grabber capable of extracting headlines from almost any web page, as well as from various XML-based newsfeed channels. Uses XML format to define web resource location and parsing rules. Works in the background, retrieving all sites from user-defined queue. Features simple interface and easy extensibility, allows users to create custom parsing rules for news sites they use. Dramatically increases web browsing efficiency. Brings all the latest internet news to the user in one window, allowing instant browser access to the news content.

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Key Features

A better way to read news

Compared to the other feed readers, Novobot offers a better way of reading your news feeds. The news feed content display pane offers full Unicode support for international feeds and newspaper-like headline view for efficient browsing. The content is displayed with full formatting, just as the feed's author intended, and is available at any time, even when offline.

• Offline feed reading
• HTML feed display
• Full Unicode support
• Newspaper-like presentation of headlines
• Only unread headlines are displayed
• New headlines are highlighted
• Locked headlines
• Persistent headline "visited" state
• Persistent per-folder reading position
• Non-scrolling channel banner

All major feed formats supported

Novobot supports all major feed formats, including RSS, RDF and Atom. You can also use NOV channels from Novobot 2.x that allow you to customise the way Novobot retrieves headlines from web pages, including pages that do not offer a news feed. Novobot also supports the new feed:// and rss:// internet protocols for easy feed addition from your web browser.

• Support for RSS, RDF, Atom (all versions)
• Support for legacy NOV channels
• Support for Apple iPhoto '06 photocasts
• Extensible web page scraping support using NOV channels
• Automatic feed format detection
• Support for feed:// and rss:// protocols

3-pane window layout

Novobot uses 3-pane wide vertical layout for its main window. This illustrates the channel (feed) hierarchy in the library and leads you from the folders (tags) to the actual content. Channels are displayed in a separate pane along with useful additional information, like number of unread headlines, type of the channel, and time of the last update.

• Lef pane containing hierarchical library view and user-defined folders (tags)
• Middle pane containing list of channels (feeds) and their icons in the currently selected library folder
• Right pane containing newspaper-like view of the channel currently selected in the middle pane
• Easy to understand view hierarchy, from high-level library view down to the single-feed view

Feed categories (or tags, or folders)

You can create a hierarchy of folders to categorise (tag) news channels using drag-and-drop or copy-paste operations. Channels can be assigned to several folders, which allows for extremely flexible feed tagging and helps to keep your channels organised.

• Unlimited number of hierarchical folders (tags)
• Folders created when importing OPML feed lists
• Folders show unread item counts

Ticker

A unique feature among other feed readers is a ticker with scrolling headlines which stays on top of other windows and provides continuous unobtrusive at-a-glance news updates. This way you can stay up-to-date with current events while working with other programs.

• Multithreaded ticker for smooth operation
• Scrolling stops under mouse cursor
• Unread headlines from the currently selected folder are displayed
• Visited headlines shown in a different colour
• Ticker sticks to screen bounds

Staying up to date

There is a Refresh action to get all headlines in one step. You can also schedule your feed library updates using many available options so that when you come to work or home the latest headlines await you. And this is all done in a feed provider-friendly way, avoiding "hammering" host servers.

• Manual refresh of a channel, a folder, or the entire library
• Scheduled refresh once, periodically or continuously
• Multithreaded channel refresh for speed and UI responsiveness
• Conditional HTTP used for provider friendliness
• Feed refresh interval honoured (but can be overridden)

Reading the news

Downloaded headlines are saved to cache to enable offline reading. Only unread headlines are shown, and headlines remember their "visited" status. A headline can be marked as read or locked (protected). Protected headlines are preserved for later reading when you mark channels as read (clear it). The reading position is preserved for each library folder (tag), so the next time you run Novobot, you can continue reading from where you left off.

• Offline headline cache
• Feed logo cache
• History for hiding read items
• Automatic removal of old read articles
• Persistent sessions
• Persistent reading positions for each tag (folder)

Adding feeds

You can add feeds manually by entering the feed's link into the Add Channel dialog, or you can import the existing NOV channel files entire directory tree at once. You can also import OPML files which makes migration from other news readers a piece of cake.

• Initial set of popular news feeds installed automatically
• Automatic feed link retrieval from the Clipboard when Add Channel dialog is opened
• OPML import
• NOV file import one by one or as a whole directory tree
• XML local feed file import

Little things that make life easier

There are numerous features in Novobot that improve user experience. Tray icon which shows the current status, support for proxies to accomodate corporate users, user-specific data storage for shared computers and context-sensitive online help all make Novobot a pleasure to use.

• Support for computer sharing (multi-user configurations)
• HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy support with authentication
• No system files modified
• Registry not used for settings
• Tray icon for various conditions