I think NWW is a rather simple software (and that’s why I love it), does it really need an entire feed of tips? I guess most of them would fit on a single page.
A large slice of simplicity comes from familiarity. I don’t imagine there would need to be many tips for it be valuable. Many new users are also new to RSS (and may be new to the operating system they are using). Some quick beginner examples:
Adding a feed: try using the home page url
Why some feeds have content and some don’t
Reader mode and how it might help
Hiding read posts: options on iOS vs MacOS
Easy to expand scope by touching on more “advanced” aspects:
NetNewsWire Themes (showing my bias here)
Automation: NetNewsWire with AppleScript and Shortcuts
Well, how did I get familiar in the first place? I actually started using RSS actively around the same time I switched to an iPhone and discovered NWW, about five years ago. To address your examples:
This is one is easier for me than for many, I use Vivaldi as my browser and when it detects a feed on a website, it shows an icon with a list of detected feeds. Once it even found a working feed on a site which didn’t mention anywhere they had a feed (I guess their engine had RSS by default, but they didn’t know it). Also big credit for Vivaldi developers for reigniting interest in RSS for me and many more people when they added RSS reader in browser, even if I moved to NWW soon enough to have sync between my devices. For everyone else I guess we need new simpler ways to discover if site offers a feed.
It’s a bigger problem because articles can also disappear when NWW cleans its database. What we need here is not a tip but a proper explanation how it works. There is some in help in iCloud article, but it happens not only with iCloud. I use FreshRSS for sync now and when articles are still on the server, NWW can clean database so hard that some feeds are ending up with no articles at all.
I think for Reader mode you can just press the button and see what happens. That’s how I found out what it does and why it’s helpful. There is also additional explanation in FAQ.
I don’t know, isn’t this a platform convention? I know there is a similar button in Mail.app, and if you find out how it works in one app you kind of know how it works everywhere.
For themes I think people either do not need them or they will find out themselves when they open settings.
Automation is a complex topic and for AppleScript I would prefer a guide or reference. Shortcuts are simple enough to use even without a guide, but as far as I know NWW doesn’t provide shortcuts actions.
For common issues what I’d prefer first is more detailed error messages to know what exactly went wrong so I can figure out a solution.
I see what you mean, but I think this is something blogs should do rather than the tool for reading them. In fact, last week I was reading the iA blog and it inspired me to write some things down. Maybe I’ll publish them when I finish writing. I already have a server which I use for FreshRSS, only thing left is to get a domain.
