It’s been 40+ days since I switch off Sharpreader to the Sage extension for Firefox. My blog-reading habits have changed as a result of the switch as well.

One of the big changes is that I’ve found myself reading only the latest few articles per blog, rather than attempting to read all the new articles like I did with Sharpreader.

Sage lacks an auto-refresh feature, but because of this I’m feeling less pressured by my newsreader to catch up constantly. I refresh only once or twice a day now, down from the “every four hours” of Sharpreader.

Overall I’m impressed. The only features I’d like to add would be:

1. auto-marking of articles of read after I’ve switched to another feed,
2. ability to filter out “seen” articles so that I don’t have them showing up in the feed window, and
3. changing the click action to start loading the feed in the current tab right away, rather than waiting until the feed has loaded and opening in whatever tag is now current.

The great thing about Sage is the customizable style sheets. Check out the Sage stylesheet selector for some example feed styles. Note: I’m currently using the one named “hicks” off that page.