Opera 40 adds RSS Feed functionality

Opera published a new version of Opera Developer today that introduces basic RSS Feed functionality in the web browser.

Opera Developer 40.0.2296.0  is out, and you may upgrade to the version if you run a developer version of Opera already or download it from Opera's website directly if you don't or prefer it that way.

The big new feature in the release is support for RSS Feeds. This is not an entirely new feature though, as other browsers support RSS feeds natively as well. Firefox for instance supports live bookmarks which basically list the latest articles posted by a site using RSS.

Opera on the other hand started integration of RSS support in the browser's Personal News feature.

Opera 40 RSS

Personal News up until now supported a selection of high profile sites that you could subscribe to. Opera would then poll those sites regularly and display new articles published on them in the personal news section of the browser.

The functionality is quite basic and somewhat hidden right now. Opera displays a search form at the top of the "add sources" page that you used to find news sources. This worked only for the integrated sources up until now.

The latest developer release changes this as it supports RSS Feed urls as well now. Simply paste a feed url into the form and wait for Opera to look it up. The browser displays the feed title afterwards and all that is left to do is click on the plus icon to add it to the list of news sources.

You may click on the feed, listed with its URL, then afterwards to display recent articles published on the site.

Please note that it may take a moment before the news section is populated the first time after adding a feed.

Custom RSS feeds can be read in timeline and stacked view, and the only difference to the list of integrated news sources is that the reading time is not displayed.

The feature is a bit rough right now but that is understandable considering that it has been integrated in the Developer version. There is no option to import multiple feeds at once for instance, and the removal of feeds is not working properly right now. The workaround for that is to paste the feed url again into the add sources form and untick the box there to have it removed from Opera's personal news feature.

The timeline view may not work properly as well if you combine the feed with other news sources. Last but not least, the feed url is displayed and not the feed name.

In other news, Opera 40 Developer ships with full Chromecast support if you install the Google Cast extension from the store.