
The NewsBlur Redesign - zengr
http://blog.newsblur.com/post/50689286246/the-newsblur-redesign
======
conesus
Here's The Verge's article on the redesign launch:
[http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350208/how-sam-clay-
and-n...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350208/how-sam-clay-and-newsblur-
survived-the-google-reader-shutdown-redesign)

Little by little sure does add up. I've been working on the redesign for iOS,
android, and both the web app and blurblogs (blurblog example:
<http://samuel.newsblur.com>) for months now. But by committing every day it
builds up. That's been the past four years now.

My favorite part of this whole business is the free insurance policy. If I
were to get hit by a bus (or god forbid, decide to stop supporting NewsBlur),
you or somebody with the necessary resources could have a copy up and running
by taking advantage of NewsBlur's open-source repo:
<http://github.com/samuelclay>

~~~
LaSombra
When I got the news about Google Reader being discontinued I tested around 4
alternatives.

Having tried NewsBlur I thought the web UI was perfect for my style of RSS
reading and it was fast enough for my needs. The Android app is the icing on
the cake.

I paid 36 bucks, the extra, to support a product that I use every single day
for more than 10 hours a day, a product I enjoy using and would contribute if
I had the knowledge or time.

Thank you very much Samuel, you are doing a very fine job and I am more than
happy in helping the only way I can/know right now.

NOTE: I am not affiliated to NewsBlur or Samuel Clay in any way. Just a very
happy customer here.

~~~
aravenel
Also a happy user here. Newsblur is by far the best replacement for high-
volume RSS power-users that I have found. And the fact that it's open source
so I can 1) satisfy my curiosity as to how he is doing things and 2) install
myself if the site ever goes belly-up is just icing on the cake.

It's definitely not perfect, but it gets better every day. Performance has
notably improved over the last month or so. Kudos to Samuel for a great
product. Hopefully someday I'll be able to contribute a bugfix or something to
help.

------
jmduke
Sam, I'm sure the past few months have been kind to you -- and with your
dedication to the product, you assuredly deserve it.

If you get the chance, I'd love to see some sort of before & after the Reader
shutdown a la Patrick McKenzie's "Year in Reviews"
([http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/17/bingo-card-creator-
etc-y...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/17/bingo-card-creator-etc-year-in-
review-2010/)). I'm sure you'd have quite a few insights to share.

------
djanogo
This could be very well be just me, there are too many clickable things on
screen, the UI seems overwhelming.

~~~
bazzargh
It's not just you. Almost my entire interaction with google reader is hitting
the space bar. After hitting 'u' to get rid of the rest of the ui.

Newsblur does the spacebar thing, (Feedly doesn't), but I can't see a way of
getting rid of everything but the river of news.

------
tenpoundhammer
Great job, I tried newsblur months ago and it didn't click for me. The
redesign feels much more natural and snappy. It's a testament to how much
features can flourish or suffer from minor performance tweaks and careful
design decisions.

For instance before, the bottom bar felt much more cluttered and difficult to
understand. It created a sense of claustrophobia, with some subtle design
tweaks it now feels like a helpful and compelling navigation feature.

~~~
edderly
I had the same experience, this time around I'm going to give it an extended
try and hopefully it will be worth parting with some cash for.

------
pedrocr
I moved over to newsblur after the reader news. One of the main features was
that it was open source so what happened with reader wouldn't happen again, I
could always self-host. After seeing how easy it is to move from one service
to another I'm not so sure.

Right now I'm a frustrated customer. All the effort seems to be going into
flashy features and redesign while the actual function of a rss reader is not
there yet. The basic feed stream doesn't work properly and never has. Items
show back randomly after I've already read them and the infinite scroll
doesn't work reliably. Bugs about this go ignored. I'll be trying feedbin.me
next as I saw several recommendations on hacker news today and it seems to be
a no fuss back-to-basics feed reader.

~~~
conesus
Support is handled every single day and I take these kinds of bugs very
seriously. You should email me your username if you are experiencing this
issue. Neither my error graphs nor my support forum show issues like
unreliable infinite scroll or random stories. Please email me your info so I
can get it fixed. I want everybody to have as positive an experience on
NewsBlur as I do.

~~~
pedrocr
I use the same username here as in newsblur. Here's the bug I submitted:

[https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load...](https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load_new_items_after_the_initial_load_on_access)

It got one reply by "Stuart" a month ago asking me if I was a premium member,
which I am. All other activity was by me.

Here's the bug about read items coming back:

[https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_stayin...](https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_staying_marked_as_read)

75 people have marked it as affecting them, it has had 72 replies so far after
being opened 2 months ago. Today's upgrade had a bunch of people complaining
again with no reply. From what I gather the frontend don't retry the call to
mark an item as read when it fails the first time so any problem contacting
the backend results in items not being read. Today I had to mark some posts as
read 5 or more times.

I may end up using another feed reader anyway since I don't need or want all
the newsblur features. That being said getting the "infinite scroll of unread
posts" feature right should be a top priority for a feed reader and so far it
hasn't been.

~~~
conesus
The unread issue was fixed 2 months ago. The most recent bug only lasted for
30 minutes and was the result of one of my app servers being down and HAProxy
just kept serving requests to it. In other words, 1 out of every 12 requests
would fail. Ugh. But that was resolved 7 hours ago, and it seems your bug is
more recent.

~~~
joshschreuder
I just emailed you re: unread showing up again. I don't think it's happened to
me since the redesign, but has definitely happened in the last 2 months.

------
highace
I'm gonna be that guy - I prefer the appearance of the blue version. Things
stand out more, it's seems easier to parse. The grey looks all washed out and
nothing really sticks outs. The layout of the right-hand panel is an
improvement though, definitely.

~~~
conesus
I went back and forth between both for a couple months and I can assure you
that the new design is much better. It looks overly subtle now, but after your
eyes and brain get used to it, you'll think the blue one was hideous.

~~~
LaSombra
Hi Samuel, maybe you can post the CSS for the blue design to use with
Stylebot,
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha).

Or even better, a guide to the CSS classes so we can use customize and share
our customizations using Stylebot. :)

~~~
BCM43
This might be more work for you, but it's open source and tracked with git.
You could find the old CSS and do it yourself.

------
fournm
I've been using NewsBlur with a paid account since pretty close to the
shutdown announcement for Reader and finally switched all of my bookmarks
over. I'm happy with the web app, and honestly, the Android app is way better
than what I was using when I was over on Reader. There's been a few bumps with
servers but they've seemed pretty smoothed out for the most part lately.

tldr keep up the good work, it's easy to recommend to other people looking to
migrate. The redesign just makes it even easier.

------
dochtman
NewsBlur is the best of the web-based bunch I've been checking out recently,
but it's still... not quite there.

For example, this glitch has been around for weeks:

<http://dirkjan.ochtman.nl/files/newsblur-glitch.png>

I'm also not sure it's quite fast enough yet. I've used FeedDemon and Reeder
(and NetNewsWire before that) for so long I'm really used to low-latency feed
UI. I think web UI can match that, but NewsBlur isn't quite there yet.

I also think the new design, while much better than the old design, is still
quite heavy, in the sense that there is a lot to take in, lots of little
details. Personally, I really liked the more sparing design in for example
Reeder for the Mac. It would be great if there was an option in the NewsBlur
UI to point to a stylesheet (or an inline <style> block) that would allow me
to play with customization a bit.

Of course, I also haven't found anything better so far, so it looks like
NewsBlur will still be my reader of choice for the foreseeable future.

------
hamburglar
For what it's worth, I have tried to get started with newsblur a couple of
times and ended up throwing my hands up. Just now, I downloaded the new
android app, thinking it would be better, and I am unable to complete signup.
The ui makes it nearly impossible to get focus into the "username" field
because I can only see a sliver of it after the soft kayboard scrolls it up,
and no matter what I enter, it says "please enter an email address" and makes
me start all over. Not to mention it keeps randomly flipping me back to the "I
need to log in" mode of the UI, which is quite frustrating. I can't say your
signup flow (or your web site on my android browser, which is a total
disaster) bodes well for the attention to detail for something as complicated
as a news reader.

~~~
lloeki
Previously in the Android app I could not "mark all as read" as it was an
instant core dump.

Now that this works, I do have unread items in the various folders and 'all
items', but the badge counters insist on saying '0'.

Add a number of glitches here and there on the web (and really I don't use it
via the browser often) and it just doesn't feel robust (and this is a shame,
because I want to like it).

------
der3k
Love the pricing part of the page (<http://www.newsblur.com/>):

Feed poor Shiloh -

Free Account: She goes hungry

Premium Account: Home cooked meals of green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots,
and brown rice

~~~
IvyMike
I was idly thinking that $24 a year is _just_ north of what I think my dad
would pay. If the price was slightly lower I think I could talk him into it.

And then it occurred to me that there could be a pricing model that doesn't
scale linearly with number of users, but becomes (slightly) cheaper the more
people use the service. I guess I've never seen the concept "economy of scale"
applied to a web service as a whole.

In other words, "If we get over 10000 paid users by next year, the price will
go down to $20 a year. If we get over 20000 by next year, the price will go
down to $18 a year." Etc.

The cons: Shiloh gets less money in the short term.

The pros: Everyone has motivation to recommend the product to their friends.
This might outweigh the loss of per-unit revenue.

Like I said, this is just idle thoughts, and there might be some way to game
the system, but I just thought I'd throw it out there for your consideration.

~~~
conesus
Maciej Ceglowski actually did the opposite with Pinboard, in that the signup
fee increases over time. I worry that with a decreasing signup fee, you
incentivize potential early-adopters into waiting longer until the price
drops.

------
werid
for over 15 years i've scrolled down webpages using the arrow keys. can't do
this with newsblur. everything else about newsblur excites me and i want to
explore it, but having the down arrow go to next story just breaks my usage so
hard...

sure i got a mouse. i try to avoid using it too much.

~~~
oyvindeh
I totally agree with this. It's pretty much the only thing that bothers me
about NewsBlur, and it bothers me a lot.

------
Kiro
"It’s a full scale redesign, too. And not just one of those redesigns where
the icons get glossier and fonts, bolder."

I think it looks the same but with different colors. From that description I
was expecting something completely different.

------
wodow
I was a little surprised to find no mention of "import" or "OPML" on
<http://www.newsblur.com/faq> , even though articles like e.g.
[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-
reader-...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-
replacements) say it's a feature.

~~~
conesus
Of course it's a feature. Either go to Manage > Import, or just use the intro
welcome dialog, where OPML import is an option.

~~~
wodow
But it should be on the FAQ - that was my point.

------
Hansi
Still looks like too much needless stuff going on, so I still prefer
feedly.com as my Google Reader replacement

------
tristan_louis
Sam,

Thanks for making a great product (was worried in the early days after the
Reader meltdown that you wouldn't scale) into something worth paying for again
and again. You're really turning NewsBlur into the one to beat and are making
it easier to not miss Google Reader. One feature request: integrate Buffer :)

------
s0me0ne
NewsBlur is good, but I don't care for the dashboard opening each time I
visit. I'd rather have it remember what I was reading last and open there the
next time I login or visit.

I switched to netvibes for now, but I don't like how netvibes wont pick up
youtube embedded videos.

------
rdl
I was delaying moving off of Google Reader since nothing else really seemed
better (and newsblur was super slow around the announcement). I'm glad I
waited -- the redesigned NewsBlur looks awesome, and I'll probably stick with
it.

------
uddjatigmh
Thanks for hard work! And the fact that it's open source, so I... However I
think there are not necessary in it. You should to redesign it more
simplicity,because some functions make people more confuse

------
ForFreedom
The design is so complicated to the reader.

------
popopje
i'm happy to pay but want to look at other options too - do any other reader
alternatives offer web and android?

------
mkr-hn
It's still nothing like what I'm looking for in an RSS reader, but I'm sure
it's good for whoever it's designed for.

------
gadders
The "Try Out Newsblur" button doesn't work in IE8.

