I finally had a chance to use the recently updated Google Reader, which I recall I “completely pasted”:http://sotto.org/2005/10/08/i_preferred_the_first_version_when_it_was_called_gmail/ the last time I posted about it. Well, after a year of tweaking their interface, I think the GR Team has completely hit the ball out of the park with the changes they’ve made.
One of my complaints with the previous version of GR was that the layout did not facilitate easy scanning of feeds, which basically made the experience lugubriously slow. But the biggest complaint I had was that the reader didn’t behave like GMail, which was what I was using for RSS at the time. Coupled with some awesome “greasemonkey scripts”:http://sotto.org/2006/01/06/gmonkey/, it was very hard to beat the GMail with RSS interface / keyboard model, at least in how it pertained obviously to my workflow.
The interaction model of the new reader is now definitely more in line with how GMail behaves, going so far as to include features of some of the greasemonkey scripts I mentioned above. I believe Mihai Parparita is on the GR team, so that would probably make sense. In addition, they’ve included even better keyboard enhancements, such as pressing spacebar to open and read the next post. Basically the entire interface can be navigated via keyboard. Oddly enough, GR now behaves like Opera’s RSS reader, with the advantage going to GR because it is server-based. These new behaviors are so good for power users, I would argue that these interface enhancements should be reintegrated into back into GMail for good measure.
Alas, not everything is perfect with the new reader. As with most Google webapps of late, there is no Opera-lovin’. But luckily, someone wrote a “user script”:http://my.opera.com/Stoen/homes/files/reader.js that fixes GR with Opera. Just put that file into the folder of your user javascripts and the app works niftily.
So GR team, thanks for listening to your audience, great work and kudos bars.
