Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really understand the huge community backlash to the Reader rework. I spend hours in reader every day, and it wasn't until they added in G+ that it actually became easy to share.The addition made it so I could share within a community I was already involved in rather then a few people in some disconnected Reader community. From my perspective they actually removed the useless and unnecessary functions that made the old reader impossible to use to actually share content. I see it as a good first step, and when G+ actually has a solid API to build upon, they can evolve Reader to use it.
Also, rabble rabble rabble too much white space rabble rabble rabble. I tried some of the community created userscripts to see if the "UI improvements" people were making actually helped and in the large part they don't as the people writing them don't seem to understand UI design.
Normally I'm the person who makes this type of comment. I'm not a fan of resistance to change, or contrariness in general - especially the particularly annoying and overly dramatic Internet Blogger brands.
However for me the crucial missing feature is being able to view and comment on your friends' shared items within Reader.
I'm completely OK with Google requiring me to have a Google+ account, and see the sense in the merging of the two 'social networks'. I'm also fine with my shares appearing on Google+. I'm happy to configure a Circle to handle my shares.
But there's no way for me to read the items that my friends who are Google Reader users have shared _within_ Reader, as either individual or merged RSS feeds. This is something I used to be able to do, and now I can't - with no replacement.
That's why the backlash is justified in this case.
PS - Google you could make me happy just by having a 'Friends shared items' menu item which aggregates Google+ shares from Reader. That's all it would take.
I'll have fond memories of pressing 'Shift + S', C, and typing a message to a small group of mates for a while though. Those were the days!
You, you just put my thoughts and frustrations into words, thank you. I'm also usually very open to change and what have you, but I despise the new reader. Exactly because I like to be in reader, and see what my friends posted from reader. I don't want it mixed with the rest of my social life, I don't want it mixed with FB like status updates, I just want to see what people are sharing in Reader. It's like I had my own "community" in reader, a small but special subset of people really in the "know". Yeahyeah, that's a circle, I know, but I went to reader to read what they shared, then I read my own, and shared. The 'dialog' was more circular, if that makes any sense. That, and my Reader slants heavily on the 'images' and artsy side of things, it was almost like a micro tumblr that only friends saw, but unlike tumblr, it's not recycled stuff, we are all pulling from different places, I followed a guy from finance, a dude that loved astronomy, and chick in advertising, a guy in tech, a girl into silly comics, and it was all right there, im my reader. It was perfect.
I wish I could upvote you even more - this is _exactly_ my criticism with the new Reader. The experience of sharing links has essentially split into two parts: I can share items with my friends from Reader to G+, but if I want to see anything my friends have shared (or if they want to see my posts), we have to go to G+. It's not cohesive anymore.
If they just added a place where you could view other people's posts in Reader, that'd be perfect. Let it pull from a Circle or something and that's it.
24in Monitor. I could see how it might not scale down well, maybe they need to introduce the UI scaling features that Gmail has that might help with a lot of peoples issues. The userscripts I tried basically just removed a lot of margins and padding around content, so maybe those might suit you on a small display?
If I remember correctly, Google engineers are given the choice of one 30" monitor or a two 24" monitors, which is what the new Google Reader was presumably built on and perhaps optimized for.
However, given the fact that laptops dominate computer sales nowadays, I'm downright amazed they didn't test it further on small screens.
If I remember correctly, Google engineers are given the choice of one 30" monitor or a two 24" monitors, which is what the new Google Reader was presumably built on and perhaps optimized for.
They also get a laptop (most choose a 15" MBP). I seriously doubt non one saw it on a smaller screen.
The lack of padding is what makes it really bad. Its now entirely too cluttered. I quit using Google Reader, and I'm trying NewsBlur although its far from perfect, its a clear step up.
I agree that the backlash is partly just aversion to change, and partly the fact that we're in a usability canyon because of the transition, but that the integration with the G+ sharing model means a better, more granular future for sharing, which is good.
Regarding the visual design, I hope they'll take cues from the Gmail redesign, which hit a really great balance between clean whitespace-full minimalism and density configurability.
I want a share-to-G+ that does not involve a public +1. And I want G+ to manage "unread" status so that I don't see the same things over and over. And keybindings in G+.
The social features of Reader were not great, but we had an active group of about 30 people who shared research papers. Quite a number of new collaborations and papers were born in Reader comment threads. I see between 100 and 200 items each day, perhaps 20-30 of which are scientific papers shared by colleagues. G+ is generally not very utilitarian and it's clearly worthless for this use case.
This works, but then you have to use the mouse, and when you're done sharing, context isn't returned to what it used to be, so keyboard shorcuts (n, shift+n, j, k, l, etc...) don't work until you click on a story to focus.
Also, I can't hit l to like (maybe p to plus now?) or shift+s to share.
You can change my sharing options, you can change the look and feel. But messing with my keyboard shortcuts is tantamount to murder.
Along the same lines, you can no longer tell instantly if an item is shared (via the bottom of the content).
Before, sharing an item would change the text to "Shared" so that you could both 1.) see that it was shared and 2.) click again to undo the Share. Now, you would have to go to G+ to check.
Agreed, I like the new design and LOVE the new gmail design. I don't see anything to complain about once they add whitespace customization (like gmail).
I notice your account is ten minutes old. Is this an astroturf? A PR troll? ...Can you really tell me it got easier to share now that it's G+ and not Reader?
One man's "community [they were] already involved in" is another man's "disconnected community." Speak for yourself
I had a carefully cultivated list of cranks, miscreants, and technologic misanthropes who found some very interesting content and had some very interesting discussions, largely by way of the "note in reader" bookmarklet.
That whole community vanished for me overnight, without even a head nod for how to get it back, and I'm a bit upset about it. Publicly "+1"-ing something isn't even a first order approximation.
I generally only lurk and don't really comment unless there is something that really annoys me. Not a PR troll, just a Reader user that isn't picking up a pitchfork and joining the angry mobs over something I've wanted changed since G+ was released.
I can see how removing the social features upsets readers, but they mentioned them before they were going to do it and allow you to move your data out if it no longer suits you. To me, using the notes for commenting always felt off, really never felt like a real conversation. I like the ability to share something to my specific circles and then discuss it there, you don't have to only click that little +1 button under the post if you don't want it public.
This seems to be the way that Google works on things. Huge changes, then iterate until it is usable again. They knew they were going to burn users, in this case very loyal users, to make a better product that aligns with their overall goals. I assume they will bring better social integration in the future, though when that will be, who knows.
that's fine, but your "only comment unless something really annoys you" is disingenuous -- this is the only thing that has annoyed you enough to comment on.
I'm sorry if my reaction seemed a little strong; you mentioned not being able to understand the sentiments you were hearing. I am suggesting that as my tiny online community vanished overnight, perhaps you could empathize with that and extend that to the other incomprehensible sentiments you were hearing.
I, for one, have resisted any sort of move towards pitchforks or torches or even (gasp) public condemnation, because I acknowledge that this is, indeed, how google operates, and also that as a user of a "free" service, that this is its actual cost. And i do still hope that the aspects of Reader that fostered such a good community can be rediscovered in G+; it's bugged me since G+ launched that the integration with things like Reader was poor.
And it may yet improve along those lines! -- Doesn't make me any less sad about the loss of my community, though...
(Likewise, you might not have used "Notes", but they could be both public or private, serving as both a vehicle for discussion or a bookmark-service for research, archiving, etc, a la pinboard or delicious. Again -- maybe not a feature that you used, but one that people who did use now need to replace.)
Very well. I thought it was suspicious and called it out as such, but I thought i had done it in a reasonable way. My mistake. He's since replied to me and i believe i've replied to him in (what i hope is) a civil manner below.
Yes. It works fine for a lot of people, and observing this does not invalidate your complaints.
Can you tell me about this? Previously, i had one-click share within Reader, and two click sharing from the web via a bookmarklet. I am genuinely curious about how this got easier with the new Reader.
What's your workflow now to share an article with a carefully curated group of friends?
I'm a long time, heavy user of Reader, but as a disclaimer: my usage consists of the letters j, k, m, and v, so I'll admit that I don't care at all about the lost social features, and my short cuts and usage patterns remain unchanged.
This article seems no different than any other of the reader articles submitted in the last few days (especially the one by the other former googler that worked on reader).
If his offer were serious because he really really cared about the product, he would have sent an email.
If his offer were serious because he really really cared about other users, he would have posted some user scripts (which lots of others have already done).
First, a user script is a poor solution because it reaches a small minority of people, is limited in the functionality it can add, and would frequently not survive updates. It's a band-aid, and a poor one at that.
Second, what makes you think I didn't send an email?
I heard from a reliable source that there were contractors behind the new design. If that's true, I'm stunned. They didn't put an employee on this project?
I'm a fellow j,k,m,v,f user, and my biggest complaint about the redesign is that it seems so much slower than before. Pressing j used to go to the next item almost immediately, now it's "press j... wait for it... next item... repeat." Makes rapidly going through unread items really irritating. Seems to be the same with the mousewheel too.
Maybe it's a browser/OS problem or something (Ubuntu 11.10, Chromium 15). I haven't heard anyone else mentioning this, but I can't be the only one...
Odd; it may be an illusion, but it actually seems faster here (Firefox 7 on Debian and Ubuntu). Not that it was slow, but now it's pretty much instantaneous.
Dear God in Heaven please let them take him up on it. Now that I'm a few days into the new redesign my workflow has become 1. Read RSS feeds. 2. Research RSS feed readers.
This morning I did what I should have done a long time ago: configure gnus to do all my RSS reading. It took me an hour but it was an hour well spent.
Until recently Google Reader was just good enough but with the recent changes, it became just too painful. I'm not talking about the "social" features; I never used them. It was the poor layout and design, wasted real estate and especially the broken key shortcuts that did it.
So now Google has lost access to all my RSS habits.
It has also been a lesson to me in SaaS solutions (Software as a Service). When the provider can make substantial changes in their service at a whim, they can leave you high and dry. You're no better off than when you put yourself in the hands of a commercial software vendor or, dare I say it, Ubuntu :-)
Now happily reading the HN feed and others through gnus...
I couldn't take it anymore. After living for a while with the Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus, which allowed me to simply hide some of the stupid white space, this last change made Reader essentially unusable.
Today I switched to Bloglines, and I can keep using j, k, etc.
I have to thank Google, however, for making my switch so easy with their export utility...
I don't know if this is considered blatent advertising or not. But I worked pretty hard on getting my chrome extension replacement for google reader done. I would love it if people would check it out. I made it because I couldn't stand the UI for Google Reader in the first place. I'm open to adding features like short cut keys ( fairly easy to implement) Please check it out at http://www.digi-dil.com/MESH
Was going to give it a whirl until I saw it was a Chrome extension. I use Chrome but thus far resisted any content formatting extensions. Extensions feel a little too ActiveX control-ish for me.
Well I'm not sure how I can convince you other than to say it is quite like running another web page on your browser. Quite literally. Chrome extensions are built using HTML, CSS and Javascript just like anything else on the web.
The reason I think this extension makes sense is purely because users should have control over the way in which they read and see content. I'm not a big fan of restrictions being imposed on us just because some designer somewhere thought that's the way it should be. I've built in an editor that let's you create your own viewing interface. Give it a shot!
What are you looking for in a reader? I develop one called Lilina, which aims to be pluggable and themeable, so I'd love to know what sort of things I should be focusing on.
I like it! It is nice and simple. I hope you keep it that way. I think it will be replacing my Google Reader. Two features that would make it perfect for me:
- Get rid of the sidebar completely and just allow to navigate through feeds with j and k keys.
If you are 1) using Firefox and 2) a client-side RSS reader isn't a deal breaker, I would heartily recommend Brief%. It's a Firefox extension and, when I was looking around for RSS readers a year or two ago, it was the only one I found comfortable. It finally converted me to an RSS addict. Google Reader was all right, but I preferred a non-cloud solution, partly because I could manually refresh feeds and be certain they were up-to-date.
No social features, and no straightforward way to sync across computers/devices, so it's not at all a replacement for Google Reader in its entirety.
For me the only problem with the new Reader is that too much space is wasted on the header thing and controls at the top. Before the redesign my articles would come up to almost the top of the browser window, now the top is uncomfortably low on my screen.
I love everything else from the redesign, it's cleaner and generally takes up less space but the design should be more about the content and less about Reader.
It really is astonishing how much bile and vitriol can be caused by a UI change. I guess it's a subset of the general dislike of change most people have. And it's also amazing how absolutely certain some people are that their own view is the right one.
I'm not a fan of the new UI yet, but I suspect in a few weeks I will have forgotten what the old one was like.
Perhaps part of it is that it is a reminder of lack of control of cloud based software? With most traditional software, if I dislike the new version I can continue using the old. With cloud based software, including just about all web based programs, when there is a new version my choices are to use the new version or switch to something else entirely (and if the product has any form of effective lock in, the second may not really be an option).
People like the feeling of being in control, and a change they did not expect and cannot undo undermines that feeling.
I miss most the confined, small but important social network I had within G.reader. I wish, in addition to a better UX the follow/subscribe to others function was imported into the circles concept and reintegrated into G.reader.
Wow this is a bit naive and egotistical. I HATE the new google reader but to think that it takes ONE man outside of Google to fix their product is downright silly. The redesign was made in the context of Google's near-future plans to ignore that is ridiculous. A more constructive move is to provide a short checklist of things to re-consider or build/recommend a competing product. Its not like Google cant improve it more soon to find a good middle-ground.
> to think that it takes ONE man outside of Google to fix their product is downright silly.
He spent 5 years at Google, including being the lead designer on the Google Reader project. It's not like he's some schmuck out of nowhere, and I don't think he asked to be a one-man team.
I think the point is that (apparently) no one at google is paying attention to how the new features integrate with the actual experience of using the Reader. He can fix that, at least.
Figure it this way: instead of Kevin Fox being pretentious, he's making a public statement. Could he have sent Google a professional email? Yes (and I suspect he did, actually). More importantly, he is making a public statement as an ex-Googler, and thus as an authority on Google engineering, that sympathizes with the negative feedback from the user base. If the users are not sending a powerful enough message, here is an ex-employee (who left on good terms, as far as we know, and was very good at what he did) giving a personal declaration to the company. That it is public shows his confidence, and that he feels (correctly) that many are dissatisfied with the recent change. And from the perspective of a large company like Google, this is not just some uninformed group griping for no reason, this is a real issue. Kevin Fox isn't attempting to be arrogant, he's giving legitimacy to an issue that may otherwise be overlooked in a classic case of a large company missing the demands of its user base.
Publicly deriding the changes (that a lot of people have put a lot of work into) and then saying "Hey, pay me, I could do better!" seems a little arrogant to me.
From Google's perspective I wouldn't rehire this guy.
I was pretty excited about Google moving sharing to Google+ as I like Google+ and I think making it easy to share will be crucial to success.
That being said, I hate the new Google Reader. I used it primarily as sharing tool, and the new sharing makes that more difficult. I think two fixes would make this better:
1) Being able to share easily with different circles. While I might be okay sharing publicly something interesting, there are plenty of less-than-appropriate funny articles that I only want to share with a few friends. This is one of the strengths of Google+, and it'd be great if Reader could take advantage of this.
2) Being able to see shared articles from other people. I understand they want to increase traffic to Google+, but this was always a great feature of Reader. In effect, each friend that used reader became their own feed. It'd be great to still have this feature and even though you're decreasing traffic to plus.google.com, you'd be increasing the overall use of Google+
Problem? Perhaps for this fellow and some others. They might might not be aware there are those who don't care for the social side of Google Reader and use it as a place to keep RSS feeds in sync.
Actually, I only made light use of Reader's social features. Aside from their absence (which I do think is a shame) the visual changes to the more newsreader aspects of Reader severely impact the product, and are a big part of what I want to repair.
Currently I have to use "#12C" to make links blue so that I can actually read the posts! Reader UI is not consistent in that both G+ and Google uses some blue for the links and heading where as reader just uses black.
Why not just launch a startup and build a superb reader that solves the problem and looks nice?
Wouldn't it be better to have the freedom to implement your own version of what the ultimate Reader is, especially in newer tech [ websockets, node.js, realtime updates, drag to rearrange widgets .. whatever ]
Id love someone to make a nice reader [and a nice mail groups] web app, Id enjoy working on these myself. It must be more efficient to build these things outside of Google, as a startup.
An RSS reader with nice UI, realtime update, location sensitivity, smart filters, and unobtrusive social features .. you had me at RSS :]
note - the Chrome Web Store has also taken a usability hit, in my view. YouTube was done fairly well, and I think that team should be moved across to do other products, or train other teams about what and how to do things.
Someone at Google needs to get a Goddamn clue and look at a UI design manual.
What the hell are they thinking?
Has Larry let the MBAs get out of control? There's clearly something wrong, as no sensible, actual user of these products surely could believe that this mess is an improvement?
:) Yeah, I'll take a look at your link, but the new styles are surely reminiscent of the awful YUI, which much as I love Crockford, I'd have to write off as crap, due to its convoluted programming model and wretched bad appearance and inefficiency. (Example: compare the stock charts in Yahoo with Google's - slow and very flickery)
Here's a concrete example in the form of a comparison between old Gmail and new GMail.
"If I remember correctly, Google engineers are given the choice of one 30" monitor or a two 24" monitors,"
That explains all. At the time "normal people" converge to notebooks and laptops with even less height, they "optimize" UI for their immense screens. The managers who approve also test it on their 30 inch screens. And they certainly don't understand the complaints, probably saying:
"don't you all have 30 inch?"
"let them eat cake."
I have an old notebook with 1050 pixels height and even there the new changes are annoying to me. What's with now more common 768, 800 and 900 pixels?
Sticking with one resolution when testing is such a noob mistake I'd doubt google could make it. You don't need a different screen to test different layouts, Firefox webdeveloper extension lets you define viewport sizes for testing easily.
I will put my current projects on hold to ensure that Google Reader keeps its place as the premier news reader, and raises the bar of what a social newsreader can be.
That's very nice, but I think 'git checkout -f PRE_POOCH_SCREW' would probably work just as well.
I wouldn't hire any "designer" who center aligns (or right aligns or right justifies) his body text. Especially not for an application that is focused on reading.
Is it really so bad? I would never even have noticed: I use Google Reader exclusively through client apps on my phone and tablet. I would never have noticed because these apps function today the same they did last week, last month, even last year. Pick a client app you like and stick with it. If it's made by a good developer the app will keep up with API changes. It could only break if Google decides it doesn't want to allow unofficial access to the Reader API anymore and doesn't provide an official API.
Also, rabble rabble rabble too much white space rabble rabble rabble. I tried some of the community created userscripts to see if the "UI improvements" people were making actually helped and in the large part they don't as the people writing them don't seem to understand UI design.