FeedDemon – Customize Reading Pane Toolbar (Vol.1)

Now that we know what the default buttons do on the toolbar, let’s explore the plethora of additional buttons available to enhance and customize your experience. There is an extensive list so I will break it up into 2 parts.

So what buttons are available and how do we get them? The best way to get to them is to follow the reading pane toolbar to the far right side. There will be a downward pointing arrow with a line over it just past the magnifying glass (which gives you recent searches and search options). Select the down arrow and click on Add/Remove Buttons. A list of options will pop up. Each of the buttons that are already selected will have a check mark next to them. If there is one of the default tools that you did not find useful you can select it and it will uncheck and be removed from the toolbar. If you want to add a button simply select it which will mark it with a check and add it to the toolbar.

The additional buttons that are available perform various functions within FeedDemon. The first button that you can add is called “Show News Items” and basically creates more of an email feel for the FeedDemon Reading Pane. I will go over this in greater detail in a future post. The next button that you can add is the Update All Feeds button. It looks similar to the common refresh button in internet browsers but it is orange and does not include the graphic of a piece of paper behind it. To me this is a little redundant because the refresh button is available on the first column that houses the folder tree. I will get into this in future posts as well. Anyway the next couple of buttons actually are standard internet browser buttons with the stop button (piece of paper with a red x) and the refresh button I described above. The next button will actually launch the article you are currently reading in Internet Explorer. You may be asking yourself, why would I need that with the tabbed browsing feature and the ability to see the web page within FeedDemon? Well one reason that I can think of is if you like to use bookmarklets or post links that you find on the internet to your blog, then you can launch Internet Explorer and click the link from your links bar and off you go. One thing….It will only activate when you are looking at the page already in the ready pane. It will not be active when you are looking at the Newspaper view.

I will pickup from here next time and move through the rest of the icons.