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Downloading and Installing the Vienna News Reader

Here is the link to download the latest version of Vienna: http://www.Vienna-rss.org/

If you click that link above, you will go the the Vienna web site (it will not open in a new window). Just look in the sidebar for the version of Vienna you'd like; as of this writing there are two versions, an English-only version, and a version with multiple language files in it, so it will adapt to the language you have OS X set to.

Once you download it, you can hit your browser's "Back" button and return to this page. After you've downloaded it, if it's not automatically unzipped, double-click the zip archive to do so. Then move the Vienna application to your Applications folder. You can either backup the zip file or move it to the Trash.

You are now set to open Vienna so we can see what it looks like and begin to customize it. So go ahead now and open it up!

Introduction to the Vienna Interface

I will not cover all of Vienna's features in this article, for example the built-in browser, or smart-folders, blogging-app integration, and some of the other advanced features. As I mentioned in the introduction, this article is for people who do not know what a news reader does, or are interested in more capabilities than what Safari and Mail offer.

When you first open Vienna, this is what you see

You will see the three main areas of the window: the "Folders" area on the left which stores the invidual (and grouped) news feeds, the "Articles" area (right side, upper portion, with the rows of alternating colors), and the main "Summary" area (right side, lower portion).

(In case you are not familiar with "user interface" conventions, both of the dividers between the three areas can be moved. To adjust the width of the Folders area, drag the three-little-bars-control at the far right of the word "Folders" to the right or left. And to adjust the space allocated to the Article list and Summary areas, just drag the dot in the divider between the two.)

There is more than one kind of layout for Vienna, but before we adjust that, let's take a look at the Preferences and customize them.

Tip: If you don't already, checking the Preferences window of a program the first time you open it, is a great way to make sure it's going to behave the way you want. And I highly encourage you to take a look at the Preferences for each program you use regularly, to make sure you have customized it to your liking.