26Jun
Switching To Google Reader … and Back
I am a pretty loyal Bloglines user ever since I started subscribing to RSS feeds. I’ve been tempted to switch over to the new version of Google Reader for awhile. Three days ago, I finally got around to organize my feeds and exporting them to Google Reader. However, Google Reader just doesn’t fit my taste and I switched back today.
Here are the main reasons:
- Scrolling One of the things I like about Bloglines is the ability to just swift through the feeds really quick and take a glance at the headlines. But in Google Reader, scrolling is really annoying because it marks the posts as read one by one, thus making scrolling really slow.
- Sharing Another great thing about Bloglines is the ability to just have a public page where you can show everyone else the feeds you are subscribing to. In Google Reader, there is a similar feature. But instead of displaying a list, it actually displays the RSS items.
- Shortcuts This is the main reason I switched back to Bloglines. Bloglines’ shortcuts are very simple. j is next item. k is previous item. n marks the item. f goes to the next folder. Things are not quite the same in Google Reader. The previous and next item shortcuts are the same, but switching between folders makes me want to scream. First I have to select a folder by pressing shift+n or shift+p. Then I have to OPEN it, again, holding down shift and pressing o. Why can’t I just select the NEXT folder and OPEN it in one press.
- Marking Items as read The is the main reason I actually use feed readers instead of iGoogle or anything of the like. With feed readers, I can keep track of what I’ve read and what I haven’t. One small annoyance in Google reader is that when I open a folder and when there is only one or two items unread(and don’t take up the whole page), I still have to press the “j” button n times, to mark them as read. Of course I can always “mark all read”, but Bloglines makes it so that I don’t even have to do any of that.
- Organizing It’s so hard to organize your feeds in Google Reader. It just plain sucks. I want the ability to just drag and drop my feeds and folders. Double click to rename them. And hold on to control to select multiple of them. I also just want to hit delete to delete a feed or folder. But with Google Reader, you have to make bunch of check marks one by one and then choose your action.
If Google fixes these annoyances, I will definitely give it another shot. But for now, Bloglines it is. Oh yes, meanwhile, checkout what I’m reading every day.
