Google Reader impressing but…..
Written on October 25, 2006 by Conor O'Neill
I’ve tried lots of offline RSS readers over the years and they just don’t feel as comfortable as the online ones. After sticking with Bloglines for the longest time (with the odd foray over to Rojo to discover it was still dog slow), I’ve been giving Google Reader a whirl for the past few weeks. So far, I’m very impressed and it does everything I need in a reader.
In general use, the only thing I don’t like is the delay when I scroll to the bottom as it auto-loads the next twenty stories. Surely the point of AJAX is that it is asynchronous? Could they not load when I am approaching the end? It just feels like stuttering scrolling at the moment. Not awful but annoying.
However, it does have one awful feature which is driving me nuts. When I subscribe to a new feed, it does not ask me for a tag/folder for it (and why do they mix and match those two terms?). So I end up with a bunch of subscriptions down the end which are uncategorised. I go into the “manage subscriptions” page and there is no way to display just the untagged feeds so I can tag them. I can select them but so what, I don’t want to tag them all the same way. I can filter by tag but they don’t have a tag and neither “none” “null” or “nuffink” works as a filter to show me untagged feeds. Are these guys only subscribed to 4 or 5 feeds so it isn’t a problem?
Christopher Carfi had a great idea which Alex Barnett covered recently where bloggers tag “support request” type posts in a particular way so that vendors can search on them and find out what problems their customers are having. I like the style suggested by Stowe Boyd e.g. support:IE7 problemsite:ulsterbank.ie. The idea would be that in many cases, the vendor suggests the tag that people use. So I have tagged this post support:GoogleReader ProblemType:tagging. Let’s see if it works.
Technorati Tags: support:GoogleReader, ProblemType:tagging, Google+Reader
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I too am an ex-Blogliner now happily using Google Reader, happy except for the “subsribe to new feeds” feature (or should I say non-feature). I really miss the easy Bloglines subscribe mechanisms (both Firefox2.0’s own and Goggle Taskbar’s).
Come on Google, even your own browser taskbar doesn’t support Google Reader subscribing and your subscription management facility looks and feels like the work of a amateur.
And it’s such a simple thing too. Bloglines also recently added the ability to drag n drop feeds from one folder to another. As the AJAX kings, you’d think Google would have that too.
Glad to hear that you’re liking Reader. Quite a few users have mentioned that they would like the ability to tag subscriptions more easily, we hope to have a solution soon.
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
Thanks Mihai, for feed junkies like myself it would be a big help.
You guys have made a huge leap forward with the new Google Reader. I must try it on my mobile phone too.
Hear hear. How easy would it be to add in-place folder options?!
I too am an ex-Blogliner (Bloglineser?) and after trying many other readers, I’m now happy to call Reader my reader of choice. Well done Google.
Just wish they’d remove that loading notice and keep the current post in view until the next one is ready.
We just pushed a new build that adds a drop-down in the subscribe success message so you can add it to a folder on the spot.
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
Excellent.
Just tried it with the quick subscribe box and it worked perfectly! Thanks.
Unfortunately, I actually subscribe to most of my feeds using the subscribe feature built into Firefox 2 where I’m asked if I want to use Google Reader or Google Homepage. It doesn’t seem to work in that scenario. I guess that’s for implementation next? Pretty please