Channel filters

Channel filters let you manage your channels in a much more sophisticated way than the traditional method of putting them into folders and sub-folders.

A filter is simply a set of conditions that a channel must meet for it to appear in My Channels [1]. In other words, you can control which channels are shown at any given time.

The power comes from the available criteria and how they can be combined. For example, you can configure Awasu to show only:

• channels that have new content.
• channels that are from the same web site.
• channels that are in one or more channel folders.
• any combination of these.
  

My Channels is constantly kept up-to-date and so channels will be added and removed as things happen in Awasu e.g. channels are updated or new items received.

Managing your channel filters

Open the Channel Filters dialog from the View main menu.

To create a new channel filter, click the green plus icon to start the Channel Filter Wizard that will guide you through the process. [2]

For quick access, hotkeys can be assigned to channel filters:

• Select the filter in the list.
• Click in the Hotkey box in the top right-hand corner of the dialog.
• Press the key combination you want to use.
• Click on the button on the right to assign the hotkey.

Configuring channel filters

There are three main criteria used to filter channels.

By choosing an option from the Filter by droplist, you can include only those channels that have new content or unread items.

You can also include channels only if they live in one or more of the specified channel folders.

Channels can also be filtered if they have certain words in their feed URL, channel name or description [3].

If you specify more than one of these criteria, channels must meet all of them to be included in My Channels.

Some examples

Here are some examples of how channel filters can be used:

• Filtering by URL
  You may have a number of Awasu-related feeds e.g. one for the main news feed plus one for each of the forums. Each feed comes from awasu.com so you can create a new filter that searches for this in the channel URL. Applying this filter restricts My Channels to showing only Awasu channels .
• Filtering by content
  Want to see only news-related feeds? Create a filter that searches for the word "news" in either the channel title or description.
  
  While this will probably work fine, it can be a little unreliable since you are relying on the title or description as provided by the channel publisher (which may change at any time). You can override this information in the Channel Properties dialog but organizing the channels into folders is a much better solution. Simply drag the channels to the News folder and then create a filter that shows only those channels that are in this folder.

The power of this method of organizing channels becomes apparent when you have many channel folders and filters that use them.

For example, let's say you are a musician with an interest in technology so you create a bunch of folders (see screenshot) and arrange your channels in them accordingly.

Channels can be put into more than one folder, so a feed advertising rock gigs would be assigned to Music, Rock and Gig listings, a feed about the latest synthesizers would be in News, Technology and Music while something like Wired.com would be in News and Technology.

Now you can create filters to show channels that meet the following criteria:

• Channels that are in Music and Technology.
• Channels that are in Music, Gig listings and have new content.
  This will show only channels that have new gig listings.
• Channels that are in Music, Gig listings and Jazz.
  This will show only jazz gig listings, old and new.