Please select "Tutorial" from the "Help" menu or press "F1" on Windows.
Perform an update check at "Help" > "Check for update"
By default RSSOwl automatically checks for a new version after startup.
This setting may be changed at "Tools" > "Preferences" > "General" > "Check for Updates after startup"
Please choose "File" > "Import From OPML..." and enter the file into
the dialog.
RSSOwl will create a new category filled with all newsfeeds from the OPML.
Updating an existing RSSOwl is very easy!
All settings and favorites should be stored in your user-home directory in a folder
called ".rssowl" that is independant from RSSOwl's installation folder.
On Windows ".rssowl" should be located in "/Documents and Settings/user.name/.rssowl".
On Linux / Solaris take a look at "~/.rssowl", from the console by typing "cd ~/.rssowl".
On Mac the folder is located in "~/Library/Preferences/rssowl".
In the case you are able to locate that folder simply copy the new RSSOwl into the
same folder of the old RSSOwl, overwriting it.
In the case you are not able to locate that folder simply run the old RSSOwl, goto
"Preferences" and perform "Export Settings". That export also includes your favorites.
In the new RSSOwl goto "Preferences" and select "Import Settings". That's it :).
Requirements on Windows: Internet Explorer 5 and above
Requirements on Linux: Mozilla 1.4 GTK2 and above
Requirements on Mac: Panther OS X.3, Safari based
Please see the topic "What do I need to run the Internal Browser on Linux?"
in this FAQ how to enable Mozilla as internal browser for RSSOwl.
The Internal browser is currently not supported on Solaris.
The default browser is executed automatically if the internal
browser is not installed. The browser will open outside of
RSSOwl.
If you want to use any other browser than the default, please goto
"Tools" > "Preferences" > "Browser" and enter the path to the
executable of your browser. RSSOwl will pass the URL as argument
to the executable.
A supported version of Mozilla must be installed (1.4 GTK2 or above 1.4).
Set the environment variable MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME to your Mozilla installation folder. e.g. setenv MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME /usr/lib/mozilla
Set the environmnent variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME. e.g. setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME}:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
On Mandrake 9.1, use:
export MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME=/usr/lib/mozilla
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:${MOZILLA_FIVE_HOME}:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
RSSOwl can now use the Browser widget.
Simply double-click on the tab to have it closed.
The other close-operations are performed when having Ctrl / Command
or the Shift Key pressed while double-clicking:
Double-click with pressed Ctrl / Command Key: Perform "Close Others"
Double-click with pressed Shift Key: Perform "Close All Except Feeds"
To hide the splash-screen that shows up on startup of RSSOwl, pass -showSplash false
to the rssowl.exe on Windows and -Dnet.sourceforge.rssowl.noSplash on other operating
systems to the java.exe call.
Disabling the click sound when using the internal browser is possible from within
the control panel. Goto sounds and find "Start Navigation" and "Complete
Navigation" and set the sound to "none".
When you are using a slow modem connection you should modify some settings in "Connection" preferences.
Decrease the number of maximum parallel connections and increase the connection timeout.
Please note that RSSOwl automatically trys to enable the WinXP skin for RSSOwl.
If you use WindowsXP and the skin did not change, try the following:
In order for an application to show the Windows XP skins, there must be a manifest
file located in the same place as the executable that launches the application
(the executable will be java.exe or javaw.exe).
The name of the manifest file must match the name of the executable, for example
javaw.exe.manifest.
Open the "rssowl.jar" with any compression tool, that supports the Java Archive
format. Copy both manifest-files from the "usr" folder to the folder of the
executing JVM (must be the same directory, where java.exe or javaw.exe is in).
Execute RSSOwl. The WindowsXP Look & Feel should now be displayed.
RSSOwl is supporting RSS versions 0.91, 0.92 and 2.0, RDF version 1.0, Atom Syndication Format 0.3 and OPML.
AmphetaRate is a centralized ratings/recommendation service that provides
personalized news and blog recommendations. Each news found in your subscribed
feeds may be rated "Fantastic", "Good", "Moderate", "Bad" and "Very bad".
Your recommendations are computed by Bayesian filtering and an algorithm finding
people who share your taste.
AmphetaRate sends you its recommended articles that you certainly will like but
have probably missed.
To use AmphetaRate, you have to enter your AmphetaRate Username and Password. RSSOwl will then
automatically create the recommendation newsfeed, that holds the recommended articles.
If the user is new to AmphetaRate an account can be registered from RSSOwl with a simple
click on the "Create Account" button ("Tools" > "Preferences" > "AmphetaRate") after entering
the desired username and password.
The recommendation feed's news come with the newstext and the url of the feed where
the news was published. This URL is mouse-sensitive. A mouseclick on it will open the
"Add to favorites" dialog, to add the feed to the favorites.
The "Latest best news" on AmphetaRate is a feed containing the latest best rated news.
This feed is accessible even if you are not registrated to AmphetaRate. The feed is
added to RSSOwl per default.
For more informations, please visit: http://amphetarate.sourceforge.net
The graphic library that RSSOwl uses supports printing only on Windows and Mac. As SWT is developed
to new versions, printing will be possible in the future and then activated in RSSOwl on
Linux.
Until then, please use the export feature to print PDF or RTF documents with your favorite
reader.
Please make sure that the font that is selected in "Tools" > "Preferences"
> "General" > "Fonts" supports the special characters of the selected
language. In the case of Japanese or Chinese please select a Unicode
Font, for example Arial Unicode MS.
Any unread news are displayed with a bold font-style in the list of news-headers.
In addition, any favorite containing unread news will indicate this by having a
blue-colored lens (instead of a white one) left to its title in the tree and a bold font style. All
parent categories of that favorite will change to an icon with a small letter
filled folder and bold font style too. This allows to easily see which categories contain favorites
with unread news.
Additionaly if RSSOwl is minimized to tray, the icon changes to an Owl overdrawn
by a green arrow.
There are several ways to have RSSOwl open newsfeeds on startup:
1.) Right-click on any favorite and select "Open on startup" in the properties
dialog.
Any favorites with this option selected will open after startup automatically.
2.) Select "Re-Open last opened feeds on startup" in "Tools > Preferences >
General". This will automatically reopen the feeds that where opened
after exit on startup.
3.) The application is accepting one argument. If the parameter is a valid URL or an
existing local file, RSSOwl will open it as newsfeed. For example:
"java -jar rssowl.jar http://www.myrss.com/rss.xml"
If you use a script to start RSSOwl, please edit it and add the parameter.
Rightclick on a category and select "Aggregate Favorites". You may also perform a fulltext
search on all favorites of the category and sub-categories using "Search".
Right-click on a favorite and select an update interval in "Auto Reload" of the properties dialog.
You may also select to update the feed on startup of RSSOwl.
All settings and favorites are saved in the "user.xml". Usually this file is
stored in your home directory in ".rssowl/".
The easiest way is to export the settings and import them in RSSOwl on your
other computer ("Tools" > "Preferences" > "Export Settings", "Import Settings").
One way is described in "What does "Save As" do?". You may also use
each newsfeed offline that you have opened while being online. RSSOwl
saves each opened newsfeed in memory.
Please goto "Tools" > "Preferences" > "Connection" and enter host, port and
if required username and password of your proxy server.
The proxy server is now used for every Newsfeed you open.
See topic "Is it possible to disable the usage of a proxy for some favorites?"
how to disable the usage of the proxy for certain favorites.
Yes. Just rightclick on a category or favorite in the tree displayed on the
left side and select "Properties" > "Use proxy". Click once to remove
the check mark. If you (de-)check the "Use proxy" setting in a category
all favorites in all subcategories are affected.
To disable use of the proxy for a Blogroll, simply rightclick on one
of the categorys that holds the Blogroll and (de-)check the "Use Proxy"
setting in "Proxy".
If RSSOwl attempts to open a newsfeed from a site that is protected with
a username and password it opens a dialog for you to authenticate. After
a successfull authentification the newsfeed is displayed.
The "Aggregate Favorites" feature appears in the popupmenu on the
tree holding the favorites after right-click on any category.
RSSOwl will aggregate all news from all sub-categorys of the selected
category into one tab. You may also search in the list of aggregated news.
An export to PDF, RTF or HTML is possible too.
If you have an opened RSS newsfeed in the tabfolder you may save the
entire newsfeed to a local XML file. You may open the file later
with "Open File" in "Quickview" or just by adding a favorite with the
path to the file.
Several things may go wrong when trying to open a XML:
- Please make sure that the URL / Path you entered leads to an existing file
- Please make sure that the file is a valid and wellformed RSS, RDF or Atom XML document
If RSSOwl was unable to load the favorite, the icon changes to indicate
that you should check the URL / Path you entered. When the favorite was
loaded successfully, the icon changes back to the normal lens again.
In order to tell RSSOwl in which directory to store settings (profile) you have to execute RSSOwl
like this:
"javaw -Duser.home=[Path to Dir] -Djava.library.path=. -jar rssowl.jar"
The [Path to Dir] must point to an existing directory. Windows user are able to
use the "-profile [Path to Dir]" parameter to the "rssowl.exe".
A Blogroll is a file that stores RSS / RDF / Atom newsfeeds. The file may be
accessed from RSSOwl with entering the path into the new Blogroll.
After successfull loading of the Blogroll it displays the favorites
(and categorys if existing) in the tree on the left side. Blogrolls
allow sharing of favorites with other people.
Just rightclick on a category in the tree on the left side and choose
"Export" > "To OPML File" and select a path where to save the file.
The file will contain all subcategories and favorites
of the selected category.
Place the file for example on a webserver and give the URL to your
friends. They will be able to subscribe to that file and see the
favorites in RSSOwl.
An empty news is a news with no description. Select "Open empty news in
browser automatically" in "Tools" > "Preferences" > "General" to open
the URL of the news directly when selecting it.
Newsfeed infos are informations about the newsfeed. Those may be
language, description, image, link to the newspage, and so on.
They show up when clicking on the title of the newsfeed.
RSSOwl will reload the selected newsfeed from the URL / Path (Ctrl+R).
Just rightclick on an element in the tree on the left side and use the popup menue.
You may also use the "File" > "New" menu. All elements of the favorites tree support
Drag and Drop. That allows an easy management of favorites and categories.
Normally the only way to open the various context-menus in RSSOwl is with using the
right mouse-button. As the Mac mouse has only one button, please hold the Ctrl-Key
pressed while clicking with the mouse-button and the desired context-menu will open.
Creating a subcategory will create a new category as a child of the selected one.
Creating a category will create a new category on the same level of the selected one.
To specify the Java Virtul Machine that should be used to execute RSSOwl, use the
optional parameter "-vm=". For example "rssowl -vm=C:/j2sdk_1_4_1". The exe will
then look into the folder "bin" searching for the "javaw.exe".
To set the path RSSOwl should use to store its profile, use the -profile [directory] argument.
The [directory] must point to an existing directory.
To hide the splash-screen that shows up on startup of RSSOwl, pass -showSplash false
to the executable.
To let RSSOwl open a newsfeed on startup, simply append the location. For
example "rssowl http://www.myrss.com/rss.xml".
Please visit the RSSOwl bugtracker @ SourceForge and post your bug
Please visit the RSSOwl Feature Request database:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=86683&atid=580505
We are always interested for new translations.
Feel free to contact us: bpasero@rssowl.org
Please visit our forum at: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=86683
A public mailing list is available at: http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/rssowl-users
We are also present in IRC at #rssowl in irc.freenode.net
You may also contact us via eMail: bpasero@rssowl.org
Please visit http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/rssowl-users
Please visit the RSSOwl forum: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=86683
or the public mailing-list: http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/rssowl-users
Feel free to post any questions.