Headlines are a great way to surf the news. All the RSS readers allow you to browse articles by headlines and the first couple sentences.
But sometimes I just want to browse articles by images. There are no RSS readers that give you an alternate view of seeing just the images. Specifically, it would be nice to see a grid of images–all cropped to square.
Most RSS readers like Readkit have a list of headlines, and shows one article at a time. In the case of a folder of Flickr feeds, you have to tap-tap-tap through all the images. I’m looking for the popular RSS readers like Reeder, Readkit, or Feedly to give us the option to see an alternate view of articles that shows just the images. This alternate view could be turned on with a simple icon click. Something like, “view articles by headline” and “view articles by image grid.”
Leaf comes pretty close with the image preview appearing next to the headline. But the images are a bit small; and only about 7 images can be viewed at once. A 7×7 grid would be so much better.
Flipboard also comes close with image previews. However, Flipboard has two major issues:
1) They mix up all the feeds from various sources. The random selection of articles is like browsing Facebook. When I look at RSS feeds, I want them all in order by date. When I pass by something, I never want to see that article ever again. +mark as read, please+
2) The fancy magazine layout by Flipboard is kinda nice, but I find my eyes have to dance around too much on the page. Just give me a simple grid of square images.
This sorted-by-date grid of images would be fantastic for creating custom groups of Flickr accounts and Instagram accounts. Flickr and Instagram’s home screens are great for their sorted-by-date feature–and that everything is shown. However, I want to group certain accounts into lists. An RSS reader is fantastic for that sort of functionality.
Put the specific accounts into specific folders. Then browse all the feeds by images.