Recently, I've been subscribing to more and more web feeds out of necessity. Since I'm now writing not only for my own websites/ weblogs, but 6 weblogs that I don't own (and more to come), I have several industries to keep up with.

What I've noticed is a change in my browsing style. Originally, I preferred using a standalone reader such as the free Feedreader, or similar software. In short, software that has three panes, similar to a standalone email reader such as Microsoft Outlook.

Unfortunately, the readers I had been using tend to freeze up or crash a lot, and I got fed up. I've tried Blogbridge, and while I like the visual paradigm, it doesn't have a third pane. Instead, it launches a Microsoft Internet Explorer window, which I don't like.

I have tried several other readers over the past year, but think that for my style of browsing/ reading, the Bloglines web-based aggregator is the best. I still would prefer a three-pane aggregator, however, Bloglines is popular enough that many of the sites I read have a subscribe button that makes it easy to add their feed to my subscription list. And paired off with a tabbed browser such as Firefox or Mozilla, it works very nicely for me.

I'm still not happy with the Bloglines OPML export, which doesn't function properly in Firefox (but works in IE). But I find tabbed browsing is a must for me. I often work with 10-30 tabs open, so MS IE simply doesn't work for me. And since some of my Bloglines feed subscriptions only provide summaries, if I want to read an article, I want reading simplicity. I don't want multiple windows cluttering up my computer screen.

The other change in my feed browsing lately is that I'm subscribing to more full-text feeds. While I do this out of necessity because of Bloglines two-pane design, I would still rather only view partial-text, and have a third pane show me the full-text of a feed item, if available.

Nevertheless, I'm finding that I like Bloglines enough that I am browsing more and more feeds (300+ at last count), whereas before it might having been 50, and only if I absolutely had to. Surely a strange admission for a self-professed RSS/ Atom web feed evangelist, but there it is.

I'm curious to know, though, what features do you want to see in your feed reader or aggregator, and what are you using?