Boredworkers.com

I’ve been using Google Reader Beta for about a year now. Now a year later, Google Labs has launched a new version of the online RSS feed reader. The new reader is set to improve user experience.

While the barebones online RSS feed reader served me well in the past year, it was lacking in some aspects and could be a little cumbersome at times.

For example, feed subscriptions were grouped together is a single list (much like Gmail’s inbox, which made feed management a headache. There was no feed categorisation. That meant that if you have 20 interesting feed subscriptions with a new post each and one boring subscription with 100 new entries (trust me, it has happened), you would have to scroll through all 120 of them in order to clear it from your reading list. The alternative would be to use the ‘mark all as read’ option. However, that meant that all the other interesting stuff would get wiped out as well. While some would question the need for me to keep the ‘boring feed’ subscription, my answer is simply that the feed is of periodic interest and I would rather not have to unsubscribe it now and search for it later when I needed the information.

Similarly, viewing ‘read entries’ in the main panel meant that you would have a jumble of old entries from all your subscribed media. That made sieving through and finding news from a particular subscription a pain. The fact that the reader streams and displays feeds in blocks of twenty entries slows and frustrates the process even further.

While the option to view ALL new entries is still available, the new Google Reader has complemented it with a listing of new entries according to feed subscriptions ala your favourite email client sub-folders. This new feature solves both the issues stated above and makes it easier for users to exclude all the boring junk from a subscription without affecting the other subscribed feeds. You can now effectively apply the ‘mark all as read’ option, as well as browse old entries from the same category without having to sieve through all the other junk. All this is available without having to move away from the reader’s dashboard, or digging through the entire reader for some obscure hidden function.

Browsing and navigational improvements have also been made. One such is the host of shortcuts that keyboard jockeys might be happy with. The ability to scroll through your feeds without the use of a mouse is a convenient feature. Other enhancements include subscription summaries on the reader dashboard, cleaner layout, and optimised space utilisation.

I can’t claim to have explored all the features in either the new or old Google Reader. However, from the visible aspects of the latest version, I am happy with the improvements. It took a little getting use to in the beginning but fiddling around for a couple of minutes, I was browsing on my merry way again. For those who are experiencing growing pains and would like to revert to the old Reader, it is still possible to do so via Settings » Preference. Note though that Google will phase out the old version and you would have to move on eventually.

Overall, I think this is a good improvement over the older version. It is safe to say that Google Reader has retained this user’s interest. For what it’s worth (probably -0.2 cents), Google Reader has my endorsement.