14 DAY TRIAL // Considering that most browsers these days can properly display RSS feeds, you could in theory never use anything beyond the browser. Despite this, most people prefer to use a dedicated RSS reader for keeping up to date with news feeds simply because they want to use their browser for other things. Furthermore, as web browsers are made for the purpose of actually browsing the net, they are not best suited for managing and reading tens of news feeds on different topics. As with browsers themselves, there is a lot of freedom of choice when it comes to RSS news readers and though none of them is clearly the best, a few come close? one of them being Ensemble2.
What it does Ensemble2 is a RSS/Atom reader that can centralize and display the contents of your favorite news feeds. Combining customization and flexibility with a pragmatic approach, Ensemble2 not only gets the job done, but does it any way you want it. While it cannot be said to have any outstanding features, it is the way it does use the features it has that sets it apart.
Working with it A news reader is worthless without a few feeds so the first step is to add your favorite ones. There is no need to worry about organizing them in any way as that can be handled later, but it is far easier to set up the way you want the application to present information when there is some actual information to be displayed.
The Ensemble2 interface is very flexible and you can customize it in many ways. The first thing you need to do is decide on the desired layout. The program groups the available layouts by the number of panes they use and this can range from two to four. Once you decide on how many panes you want, you can choose from the list of available layouts. The list might be just squares and rectangles, but that's all you're really looking for, as the content of each pane can be set to your liking, the important thing here is the way they are laid out. Once a layout to your liking is chosen, you can decide what goes in which pane, through the drop down menus. Further customization of the individual panes can be accomplished and various information can be hidden and shown in each pane.
The feeds themselves can be organized into folders and you can create Smartlists that will automatically select feeds based on your criteria. If this is not enough for you, you can also organize your feeds using boxes. These boxes are similar to tabs, and they each contain their individual folders, Smartlists and feeds. Everything supports drag and drop both for organizing and reordering, even boxes. The end result is a very neat and tidy setup where you can keep everything separated. Unfortunately, this is also the home of one of the nastiest problems I have found with this application. Smartlists can be incredibly useful for continuously reorganizing information in a way that makes more sense and I make heavy use of this functionality whenever given a chance. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the way Ensemble2 handles these Smartlists. The application gives you the option to select which feeds you want to be used as content for the Smartlists, but if you make use of this option nothing happens. You can use all feeds and everything works as expected, but as soon as you tell it to use the selected feeds, or the feeds not selected, the entire contents of the Smartlist dissapear.
When it comes to the feed contents themselves, they become smaller and smaller as time goes by and in some cases you only really get the title. Many RSS readers have built in browsers, so that you can read the full story without having to use your regular browser. Unfortunately, doing this often requires dragging of the feed to the browser tab or some other such methods that can become redundant. Ensemble2 does things differently. It will show you the regular content of the feed, but clicking on the feed title will automatically take you to the full story, within the same pane. The program can even be configured to display the regular feed content and full story side by side, or only the full story. And the best part about the way it does things is that once you are done viewing the full story, you can simply continue to the next feed and see the regular feed contents, without the need for any additional commands.
The Good Powerful, flexible and incredibly customizable but above all very functional. Ensemble2 is one of the few readers that you can get to look exactly how you want and still have everything one click away.
The Bad The bug that prevents proper selection of the feeds to be included in Smartlists is quite bothersome. Without that option, Smartlists lose over half of their functionality.
The Truth Ensemble2 might not be the best for everyone, but it will definitely be the best for a lot of people. With all RSS readers offering the same functionality, usability becomes the key factor and this program gets it right.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
