An elegant way to solve a GoogleReader task?

Interesting.

I'm using NetNewsWire, so I have a Google Reader in the background. Just checked, what you are telling.

As a start, there should be a page open, where only the list of marked items (yellow star) is shown (no sidebars!).
All items should be un-collapsed.

The strategie for this workflow could be, to use the fact, that only one entry on a page is "active" ( = has e dark blue border) and then use key arrow down to get to the footer of the current entry, if the entry exceeds a page.
To get the next entry active, we use the button "next ..." at the bottom of the screen.
To end the loop, we have to check for a situation, that only comes up, when clicking "next ..." and nothing happens (may be tricky).
The browser window should be full screen.

basically we need to pictures:
- upper left corner with the yellow star and part of the blue border to identify the active entry
- lower left corner with the yellow star and the text "remove mark" or so (sorry, my reader is german)

When you test this, you will learn, that also the lighter blue may be found, but with a lower similarity. So we use a Pattern instead, to define a higher similarity.

so we can do the following outer loop:

upLeft = Pattern(<star + border>).similar(0.9)
lowLeft = Pattern(<star + text + border>).similar(0.9)
next = find(<picture of button "next ..." at the bottom>) # we store the match, since the button will be there all the time

theEnd = False

while not theEnd:
    up = find(upLeft)
    # here we can do something with the head of the entry
    low = find(lowLeft)
    # now we know, the footer is there and we can check and click in the footer
    click(next)
    # check wether there are more entries
    if no_more_entries:
       theEnd = true or break

When you use 0.9.9 (recommended) every time a find() does not succeed, the script will stop with a find failed exception.

may be this helps you to get on the road. First just try to get thru the list, then the other details.

I will come back later on with a solution for "entry is longer than one page".

Have fun.

Now the solution for the long entries (whole script, I changed the loop)

When you are new to Python, mind the indentation (e.g. 3 blanks for every indentation level). This is the way how in Python you build blocks of statements.

upLeft = Pattern(<star + border>).similar(0.9)
lowLeft = Pattern(<star + text + border>).similar(0.9)
next = find(<picture of button "next ..." at the bottom>) # we store the match, since the button will be there all the time

while True:
   up = find(upLeft)
   # here we can do something with the head of the entry

   while True:
      try:
         low = wait(lowLeft, 100)
         break
      except FindFailed:
         type(Key.DOWN)

   # now we know, the footer is there and we can check and click in the footer
   click(next)
   # check wether there are more entries
   if no_more_entries:
      break

explanation:
we try: to find the footer (I use wait, so I can limit the search time). If not found, we get a FindFailed exception, that we catch (except FindFailed:) and scroll down a little.
If found, the loop is stopped, since we come to the break statement.

Now handling the footer:
We use the same approach (the script has to continue in either case):
unLike = Pattern(<pic of unlike symbol + text + the blue border below>).similar(0.9)
weLike = Pattern(<pic of like symbol + text + the blue border below>).similar(0.9)

try:
   find(unLike)
except FindFailed:
   # now we know, that we did not like the entry until now and we click it
   click(weLike)

----- whole script until now:
upLeft = Pattern(<star + border>).similar(0.9)
lowLeft = Pattern(<star + text + border>).similar(0.9)
unLike = Pattern(<unlike symbol + text + blue border>).similar(0.9)
weLike = Pattern(<like symbol + text + blue border>).similar(0.9)
next = find(<picture of button "next ..." at the bottom>) # we store the match, since the button will be there all the time
cnt = 0

while True:
   up = find(upLeft)
   # here we can do something with the head of the entry

   while True:
      try:
         low = wait(lowLeft, 100)
         break
      except FindFailed:
         type(Key.DOWN)

      # we work with the footer
      try:
         wait(unLike, 1) # we use wait to speed up the workflow
      except FindFailed:
         # now we know, that we did not like the entry until now and we click it
         click(weLike)

   click(next)

   # check wether there are more entries
   if no_more_entries:
      break

   # this could be the hand brake
   cnt += 1

If at any time, you get the impression, that the script is in an infinite loop or you want to stop it, try alt-shift-c or click the minimize button of the browser window (next find() will fail and end your script).

May be this is enough, to get you to what you want. May be you find a solution to end the loop yourself.
At any time you can paste your script and write down your ideas, I will try to help you.

Sorry, somehow I saved the comment to early:

   # this could be the hand brake
   cnt += 1
   if cnt > 50: # stop the loop after 50 cycles or whatever
      break