Rated 4 out of 5 stars

by CoffeeIsLife on Sept. 11, 2012 · permalink

I've been using Firefox feed readers for years now. Started with Sage and later migrated over to Feedly. Now, I'm running Bamboo. Almost immediately after installing this Add-on I knew it was the feed reader I'd been looking for. Why? Because it sticks to the most important design principle of all...do one thing, and do it well.

All the features are there; you only need to have a look at the Options page. For those who've had issues with losing their feeds, which may not have anything to do with Bamboo Feed Reader in the first place, click the "Import" button on the main toolbar followed by the "Export OPML file" button. This will save all your feeds into a nice and compact XML file where it can be re-imported on a whim (good for migrations and/or following a clean install of Firefox). My OPML file has many subscriptions and is about 8.5 KB. Save that file somewhere safe and then you never have to worry about losing your subscriptions again.

Personally, I haven't had issues with memory leaks related to Bamboo Feed Reader (at least that I've noticed). So can't comment on that. Although, this should always be a top priority for Add-on developers.

Really, my only feature request, that would bump this Add-on up to a perfect five stars, is to allow for clicking links that then open in a background tab (rather than a foreground tab that steals the focus). I think what a lot of us do is queue up the posts we actually want to read, then go over to the rightmost tab and start reading through them one by one. So by having each tab steal focus that definitely disrupts the flow of things for those of us who use a feed reader in this manner.

All in all, I'm really glad to have discovered this excellent add-on and appreciate all the hard work of the developer. So Thanks Fray. And everyone else, please remember to support developers with a small donation if you have the means.