
And Here It Is: The New Google Reader Revealed - antr
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/31/and-here-it-is-the-new-google-reader-revealed/
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garethsprice
Adding a full 20px of vertical padding to each item in a list sure looks
pretty, but it's cut the number of items visible on the page by ~50%. For a
tool designed for skimming large amounts of information it seems to cut
efficiency rather than improve it.

Can any UI people provide a good reason for this change? (More white space =
faster skimming/more comprehension?)

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lukesandberg
You assume that skimming is a primary use case. That is not how i use google
reader (if there is a feed that i consistently do not want to read i
unsubscribe). Maybe they were optimizing for my use case, where you read
everything (or close to it).

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rfvtgb
For example, I have Hacker News in my rss feeds. I certainly never read
everything or even close to that. As a fellow HN user, surely you are not
interested in every article here?

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mikeklaas
Why are you using an RSS reader (even worse, one that tracks unread counts),
then?

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rfvtgb
Because it is a very good aggregation of almost everything on the internet I
care about. I can have feeds for tumblr accounts, youtube accounts, twitter
accounts and whole subreddits and without actually having an account in any
one of them or actually having to go to them everyday.

This ties in with my complaint with Reader removing social features. I don't
want to go to G+ everyday to see my friends' shares when previously I could
stay in the only ``social'' network I care about.

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1010011010
So the only way to share something privately is to first publicly +1 it?

Ah, apparently you can click "share" in the black bar at the top and it will
let you directly share the currently selected item in reader with specific
circles. That's not very discoverable.

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cgranade
I agree, that is a poor choice to have as the only way to share something. An
easy fix would be to add a link on each item as a kind of synonym for the
Share button in the G+ bar. That said, the problem is a pretty minor one given
the extent of the redesign. I'm rather happy with the new Reader myself.

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abhimishra
The new UI seems to waste a lot of the screen with whitespace, to the point
where I feel like it is an unintended bug (this is in the 'Expanded'
view)...and it seems like you can no longer resize anything on the page?

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chad_oliver
Contrary to most people here, I really like the new layout. I'm trying to move
to web-apps for most of my daily needs, and I specifically decided that the
old Google Reader wasn't good enough.

This feels much more like a native app, rather than something that 1999
forgot. Form may not equal function, but it sure influences function.

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barredo
im sorry but: fuck everything about this.

google reader was the site where i've learned the most in the internet by
sharing and reading other people's comments and notes. it was a truly content
based social network

it was fun

it was great

it is gone

~~~
joebadmo
I totally disagree. The old social functions were totally opaque, irrational,
and hard to control.

The new system allows you to share with select groups, or publicly, in a very
granular way.

Just because you got used to an old, broken way of doing things doesn't mean
that it was better. I can't believe the amount of collective bitching about
this long-overdue overhaul.

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barredo
> The old social functions were totally opaque, irrational, and hard to
> control.

They were not. I've been using them (with a group of +100 people, almost of
all of them "Computer Illiterate") for 4 to 5 years.

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rfvtgb
They sacrificed usability to make a lot of GReader users use G+ begrudgingly.
Now, instead of being able to see a nice feed counter for friends' shares, I
would have to go to G+ in another tab to do what I was previously able to in
the very same tab.

Reader integrating into G+? Why is this relationship not mutual?

Edit: And the concept of "+1" being to "give it your stamp of approval" does
not exactly suit the majority of my shares...

For one, I shared a particular article called "New in Reader: a fresh design,
and Google+ sharing".

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dinde
I dislike how there is no visual difference between read and unread items.

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chad_oliver
But there is a visual difference. Unread items have a bold title and a white
background.

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youngtaff
It's horrible...

Removal of sharing completely fucks up the workflow I use to send things to
pinboard

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hollerith
Well, from Google's point of view, that is a feature :)

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laacz
If for a few days I've been nervous that my free Apps account still does not
have Google+, now I'm glad. Because that means, that I won't get new Google
Reader, since it is useless (and probably won't work) without Google+.

Oh, wait. They could switch my reader to new version, and then it wouldn't
work, because I don't have Google+. Oh. Waiting.

Or I'm just giving in to mass of people, who are not glad with the product,
which is not yet shipped.

Update: I have new version of Reader. And no social stuff.
<http://laacz.lv/tmp/oops-google-reader.png>. Sweet, Google...

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teilo
The New Google Reader is ugly and has fewer features. Hardly what I would call
an upgrade.

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Nic0
what is this all about, tablet and smartphone again? maybe this 20px space is
more handy with phone, but i'm very confused about pc.

I can't use this with a laptop, can I?

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runn1ng
The worst thing about these new designs is - they are LESS USABLE on Android
tablet than before!

I wanted to write an article about how all the new interfaces (Google Groups,
Google Docs, Google Translate) work LESS on Android tablet than the old ones,
but I have no time for that.

Plus, I feel like I am the only person in the world with an Android tablet
anyway.

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lukesandberg
why don't you just use the app?

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runn1ng
Which app do you mean?

Plus, I personally dislike having a separate app for every second service,
when I have a browser.

In an ideal world, that would be all I need.

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lukesandberg
I meant the Google Reader app:
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.app...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.reader&hl=en)

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MarkSweep
Is there a way to get your old shared items back? I'm feeling a betrayed
having all those interesting links and comments taken away from me.

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neonkiwi
You can get your shared items (and a few other things) as JSON here:
<http://www.google.com/reader/settings?display=import>

This isn't very useful to the average user, but I'm sure any HN reader can
handle this.

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laz
sigh. I'm now looking at <http://tt-rss.org/>

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nvictor
ok nice looking and all but still not API T_T

