Screenshots
What the original RSS Bandit reader actually did, feature by feature — pulled from the project’s own documentation.
From the archive · features as documented in 2005–2008
RSS Bandit’s interface changed several times over its active years, and the original screenshots from that era are no longer available to republish here. The features they illustrated are still worth recording, though — this is what the application actually supported.
Multilingual interface
The interface was available in multiple languages, with proper Unicode support for reading feeds and posts in other languages and character sets.
NNTP newsgroup support
Beyond RSS and Atom feeds, RSS Bandit could connect to NNTP newsgroup servers — including ones requiring authentication — letting you read threaded discussions, post, and reply from the same interface used for feeds.
Newspaper view
Unread items across a feed, a whole category, or a saved search could be displayed in a single scrollable “newspaper” view, using the same stylesheet format as FeedDemon — so custom styles could be shared between the two readers.
Comment viewing and posting
For blogs that published a comment feed, RSS Bandit could pull in and display existing comments alongside a post, and let you post a reply without leaving the app.
Custom theming via XSLT
The rendering of feed items was fully customizable through XSLT-based themes — toolbars could be repositioned, tabs and feed order rearranged, and the reading pane restyled entirely, down to community-made themes.
Feed autodiscovery
RSS Bandit could automatically detect a site’s available feeds from its homepage, using the same feed-icon convention later adopted by Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox.
Flagging items for follow-up
Items could be flagged for later, marked with an icon and a distinct font color, with a separate folder for flagged items so nothing got lost in a busy feed list.
Feed error reporting
Feeds that failed to parse or load were surfaced in a dedicated errors folder, with a direct link to validate the problematic feed.
Sent comments tracking
Any comment posted back to a blog through RSS Bandit was logged in a “Sent Items” folder, the same way a desktop email client tracks outgoing mail.
Integrated web search
A configurable search bar was built into the toolbar, letting you run a web search without switching to a browser.
Item search
Feeds and folders could be searched directly for a specific item, rather than scrolling back through a list to find something you remembered reading.
System event log monitoring
With help from a companion tool that converted Windows Event Logs into an RSS feed, RSS Bandit could be used to monitor system logs — your own machine’s, or another one’s on the network — the same way it monitored any other feed.
RSS Bandit was released as open source in 2010. The code is still on GitHub.