Interface improvements
There are couple of thing that needs to be improved in the interface of The Old Reader.
Side menu needs to be limited in size when the browser window is stretched. On resolution of 1920x1080 the subscriptions menu takes up to 20% of the screen, The longest feed title I have is 230pixels wide which means almost half of the menu stays empty.
The Subscription folders needs to be better distinguished from the feeds. All of the feeds are aligned right under the folder names. The folders names are grey and have smaller characters than the feeds. I would suggest marking the selected folder with darker tone of grey or with one of the two colors from the logo (green or red) Align the feeds one step to the right so that its more clearly visible which feeds belong to which folder if couple of folders are open.
Add an "create folder" button. I had read the help info on that. While the idea is very cool its not always easy to grasp it. I see that when I select a feed under its name and address I find "refresh" button and "unsubscribe" button. It might be a good idea to place a "add to a folder" button too. Inside we could have an option of creating a new folder. That is at least one way to do it.
That is not so much an interface problem but I will squeeze it anyway. Tagging and exporting public pages is very important feature of google reader. Hope that you are considering it. In addition one thing that was always bugging me was that in google reader I was not able to sort my tags in folders, which created a long list of tags under my subscriptions. Beside the many other things I was tagging I used to sort many picture tagging them by art style. I could have easily stack all of those in a folder named "Art" and separate them from the rest of the tags if that feature was accessible.
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Georges Chenard commented
Another suggestion : more differentiation between read and unread items in the list. Make it a little more like Google, where the unread items were in bold, while the read items would lose the bold.
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Juan Antonio commented
And one more minor thing: Add an option for the user to decide whether or not the screen will scroll up when selecting an item. It's a minor complain, but most of my items don't take up the whole screen height when expanded, and the current interface makes me scroll up after reading it. I understand this has been made so just out of convenience, but it would be nice to hace the option.
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homie commented
@1. I've tweaked and ported Vector's custom style to the Stylish standard which is recommended by the The Old Reader dev on the community support page.
http://userstyles.org/styles/89947/the-old-reader-sidebar-custom-width@2. I've found this style suiting my needs:
http://userstyles.org/styles/88273/the-old-reader-indent -
Gary Moore commented
Additionally - the buttons all look too similiar
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Markus Havemann commented
Please provide a more "condensed" view, less space wasted by side menu, less space between feed items and less space between categories and feeds in side bar, smaller menu bar (the "Unsubscribe" button doesn't need such a prominent place), smaller font, distinguish between "read" and "unread" items by normal strike vs. bold
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Gustavo Eulalio commented
I would add the following:
5. Add the ability to Like a post without opening it (I use the Like as a "read later" feature because I not always able to read a post or it may be NSFW, so I mark it to read at home).
6. Add the ability to Mark as unread without opening the post. -
Vector commented
I've crated a user style, that limits the left menu width (and makes the title full-width, so you can click it more easily):
http://stylebot.me/styles/2243You need a Chrome Stylebot Extension for that: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha
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Anonymous commented
Also, on-hover help text in the menu buttons, it doesn't have to be fancy, just like image alt text or something.
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Евгений Триллер commented
Привет. Хочу выдвинуть несколько предложений.
1. Заметил, что неодинаково показываются новости с разных сайтов. Видимо, дело в том, что в фидах сайты передают помимо xml-разметки ещё и html, который и попадает в ленту олд ридера. Сравните один скриншот http://take.ms/iMWEw и второй http://take.ms/HO6Ph.
В первом случае div.content-body содержит img (1) и непосредственно текст (2), и недостатком вёрстки является лишь отсутствие отступа вокруг изображения (в частности, справа - между 3 и 4). Во втором случае img и текст находятся во вложенном в div.conent-body параграфе. Картинке помимо отступов не хватает ещё и обтекания справа. Предлагаю вам для начала внести дополнения (Б) в стили для элемента img (А): http://take.ms/obh99, а в перспективе парсить новостные потоки с сайтов так, чтобы они приводились к одному виду.2. Хотелось бы немного анимации при переключении с новости на новость. При нажатии на кнопки прокрутки (http://take.ms/l8BiC) сейчас прокрутка до следующей или предыдущей новости происходит мгновенно - по моему мнению, это не очень приятно выглядит, а ещё если новости по размеру анонса и картинки похожи, порой пытаешься понять, переключилась новость, и ты не заметил, или же не переключилась. Если бы после нажатия на кнопку прокрутки собственно прокрутка (пусть бы она была и очень быстрой), анимировалась, мне кажется, интерфейс стал бы чуть дружелюбнее.
3. Не хватает прокрутки ленты новостей при помощи клавиатуры. Было бы отлично обрабатывать нажатие стрелок вверх и вниз так же, как кнопок прокрутки http://take.ms/l8BiC
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Anonymous commented
Would add couple of things to that.
Highlight feeds (bold them?) with unread items better, right now the unread count at the end of the line isn't aligned with the feed title properly and it isn't that fast to see which feeds have unread items.
Also, less empty space between feed titles in list mode and less empty space between feeds in the sidebar would be nice to fit more items per screen.
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Anonymous commented
My god the menu bar is a massive waste of space that is more akin to the Reader redesign than the original. Please make it able to be minimized.
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Ivan Berov commented
One additional improvement would be - Better differentiation between posts. In a list of posts while scrolling its hard to distinguish one post from another. What it really needs is just tiny adjustment of the color of the stroke outlining the post frame.
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Jivco Atanasov commented
shared this idea