Over the years, there have been many times that I’ve been asked to compare Sage and Wizz. I’ve never really used Sage, so I’ve never been in the position to make a fair comparison. Of course there is also the question of my subjectivity. Since getting involved with the Sage-Too project, I now feel that I’m more able to offer a balanced and objective comparison. Sage-Too has already outstripped the functionality of Sage 1.3.10, so my comparison will be between Sage-Too 1.0.0 and Wizz RSS 3.0.0.
| Sage-Too | Wizz RSS | |
|---|---|---|
| Integrates with Firefox Places? | Yes | Yes |
| Feed parser? | Uses the Sage feed parser with modifications to prevent vulnerabilities | Uses the Firefox Feed Parsing API |
| Aggregates feed items? | No | Yes. For a user defined number of days. Default = 14 days. |
| Automatically check feeds for new content? | Yes. Only when the sidebar is open. | Yes (Not available in Wizz RSS Lite). And collects all newly found items into a SQLite table so that it isn’t necessary to reread the feed. |
| Feed search? | Yes | Yes. Only finds feeds in the head section that are typed with the correct mime types. |
| User defined feed folder? | Yes | No |
| Hide read feeds? | Yes | No |
| Hide read items? | No | Yes |
| Mark items read/unread? | Yes | Yes |
| Mark feeds read/unread? | No. I think someone is working on adding this functionality to Sage-Too. | Yes |
| Mark all feeds in a folder read/unread? | No | Yes |
| Read all feeds in a folder with single click? | No | Yes. Optional. |
| OPML Export? | Yes | Yes |
| OPML Import? | Yes | Yes |
| OPML Import from remote host? | No | Yes |
| Share feeds and feeds items using email? | No | Yes. Doesn’t support SMTP servers that require authentication. |
| Enclosure support? | Yes. Limited. | Yes. A single enclosures can be rendered using the default handler. All enclosures in a feed can be rendered using the default handler. All image enclosures can be rendered on a single page. |
| Automatically save item link content for offline reading? | No | Yes (Not available in Wizz RSS Lite). Very limited. Only saves HTML. |
| Automatically save enclosures? | No | Yes (Not available in Wizz RSS Lite). |
| Centralized feed storage? | No | Yes. Optional. |
| Filter feed items? | No | Yes. By word or by phrase. |
| Preview feed in browser page? | Yes | Yes |
| Preview multiple feeds in single browser page? | No | Yes |
| Customizable preview page through CSS? | Yes | Yes. Need to enter path to custom CSS on about:config page. |
I think that more-or-less answers all of the important questions. If I’ve left out anything of importance, please let me know so that I can add it.
Mike, thanks for the comparison, which I found very useful.
After reading this post, I gave Sage-too a try. However, after a day of using it, I think Wizz RSS is a better RSS reader for me (maybe I’m getting too used to it).
The default font used in sage-too under my FF is something that I don’t really like especially when displaying Chinese.
But one thing that is definitely welcome in sage-too is that its speed of reading a feed is way faster than Wizz RSS. Almost instant, comparing to Wizz’s 3 to 4 seconds to read (while freezing the browser).
Could you check if you can make Wizz faster again? I know we have touched this issue before. But given that sage-too is faster, I’d assume the same thing could happen in Wizz. Remember, Wizz under FF 2.0 is really fast.
Thanks.