{"id":2076,"date":"2011-11-01T23:02:54","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T03:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=2076"},"modified":"2011-11-01T23:02:54","modified_gmt":"2011-11-02T03:02:54","slug":"the-new-google-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2011\/11\/01\/the-new-google-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Google Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/RSS-icon.png\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2077\" title=\"RSS icon\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/RSS-icon.png?resize=100%2C100\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/RSS-icon.png?w=256&amp;ssl=1 256w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/RSS-icon.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Pass the crow, please.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtoncitypaper.com\/blogs\/citydesk\/2011\/10\/25\/google-reader-is-dying-will-you-cope-by-protesting-perhaps\/#comment-1090482\">noted<\/a> that the hullaballoo about the <a href=\"http:\/\/googlereader.blogspot.com\/2011\/10\/new-in-reader-fresh-design-and-google.html\">impending changes<\/a> to Google Reader were likely overblown.\u00a0 Insofar as we&#8217;re talking about the sharing and social features migrating to Google+, it probably is overblown.\u00a0 But the new user interface stinks.\u00a0 From Google&#8217;s official blog:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A new look and feel that&#8217;s cleaner, faster, and nicer to look at.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Cleaner?\u00a0 I guess.\u00a0 Faster?\u00a0 Not in my experience so far.\u00a0 Easier to look at?\u00a0 I don&#8217;t use Google <em>Reader<\/em> to look, I use it to <em>read<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The functionality of the old interface is completely lost.\u00a0 The buttons are all in the wrong place.\u00a0 Simple features (such as &#8216;mark as unread&#8217;) are nowhere to be found. The color scheme is harder to read, fewer RSS items appear on my screen, the spacing is awkward, there&#8217;s excessive and wasted blank space, the hierarchy of information is all wrong (why is the subscribe button so big and red?), etc.<\/p>\n<p>What a mess.<\/p>\n<p>The least Google can do is to offer users the option to retain the old interface.\u00a0 Gmail offers this for users (via themes), Google Docs and Google Calendar&#8217;s recent interface redesigns offer the option to switch to the older, more compact, more information-dense interface as well.\u00a0 Google should make the same option available for reader, or I&#8217;m going to be in the market for a new RSS feed reader.<\/p>\n<p>The initial reaction <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/forum\/p\/reader\/label?lid=2642d938ed0ab7d4&amp;hl=en\">isn&#8217;t good<\/a>.\u00a0 Not that most UI changes are universally embraced, but this is more than a Garth Algar &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.killerclips.com\/clip.php?id=22&amp;qid=1708\">we fear change<\/a>&#8216; moment &#8211; this is a step backwards in utility.<\/p>\n<p>Pass the crow.\u00a0 For the time being, the reader items in the sidebar won&#8217;t be updating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pass the crow, please. Last week, I noted that the hullaballoo about the impending changes to Google Reader were likely overblown.\u00a0 Insofar as we&#8217;re talking about the sharing and social features migrating to Google+, it probably is overblown.\u00a0 But the new user interface stinks.\u00a0 From Google&#8217;s official blog: A new look and feel that&#8217;s cleaner, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[325,324],"class_list":["post-2076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-google-reader-2","tag-meta-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-xu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2076"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2079,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076\/revisions\/2079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}