That toolbar tho. Ugh. I assumed he was talking about Outlook.com, not Outlook 2013.
Ribbon is collapsible in all Microsoft applications: Ctrl+F1 or click on the ^ in the right most part of the ribbon.
Does the search folders work for RSS feeds too?
It does. The RSS feed items are treated like emails, so you can choose a feed folder or multiple folders and set up whatever search parameters you want. I set one up to show all articles posted by "ris," and it worked as you'd expect.