I currently use IE, and I’m quite disappointed with its feed reader. For example, it doesn’t mark all copies of the same article read if it appears in multiple different feeds from the same site. And frequently the feed database becomes corrupted such that feeds cannot be updated, or if they are updated they do not bold (or unbold) correctly in the Feeds list. And the feed view doesn’t display embedded flash objects, or even placeholders for such objects. And once the feed update process begins in the background, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to kill it off and regain control over your internet connection.

So I thought I would try out Firefox, because “everyone” seems to rave about this browser. Exporting my feed list was a snap, but importing it into Firefox took forever (several minutes). I have no idea what was taking so long. But the problem I run into is that Firefox (even with an add-in like Sage) doesn’t appear to save any state, so you can never really be sure which articles you’ve read or not read, if you restart Firefox. It’s simply missing any of the common-sense features to control frequency of updates, marking all as read, counting how many articles are new, etc. etc. etc. I’m really shocked that a product would even be released to the public at all in this state, becaue it’s simply not finished (read: not started).

In 2010, for a browser to not have a built-in feed reader is just absurd. I would never browse the web any other way. So I’m sticking with IE.