FeedDemon – Feed Auto Discovery

Along the way as I explored FeedDemon and developed the user guide pages I said that I would provide more information on some of the topics in later posts.  The Auto Discovery tool is one of those topics that I saved for later. 

The Auto Discover is an RSS icon that has been turned into a button on the Reading Pane Tool Bar.  As I stated in the post about the Reading Pane Tools it is an optional button that you can activate as a part of the toolbar (for more info see FeedDeomon – Reading Pane Tools, from May 2,2009).  This is one of those Icon/button(s) that requires you to be in a specific area of FeedDemon and performing a certain task before it will be an active tool.  What I mean is that this icon will not be active all the time.  There are specific activities that you will have to engage in before it will be active.

It is not as difficult as it sounds.  When you are in FeedDemon and you simply have to look at post in the tabbed browsing view (for more info see FeedDemon-Tabbed Browsing, from April 23, 2009).  If a feed is available on that page then the icon will activate.  If there are no feeds available then it will not   activate.

You have two options once it activates; first you can select the small down arrow next to the RSS icon which allows you to see a list of the available feeds. When you select the feed that you want to add the Subscribe Wizard will open with that feed in the feed address loaded in the feed entry field.  The second option takes you straight to the Subscribe Wizard and will have the first feed listed in the feed entry field.  Then it will follow the normal steps for adding a subscriptions (see FeedDemon – Adding Subscriptions from June 22, 2009 for more info).  Through the subscription process you can identify which folder you want it to be located.  Once you complete the process the new feed will be available with the latest feeds. 

Next time we will look at the next topic that I said I would review at a later date: Feed Properties.