Google Reader Update

Dear Google,

I have now been using the new, stripped down version of Google Reader for over a week. I admit that my initial comments were made in haste, written pretty much from first impressions, so in an effort at fair play, here is my thoughts a week in.

One of my biggest complaints about the new look was that I had to use two scroll bars to read some posts! I found a way around this quite by accident. It turns out hitting "F" enables a full-screen mode that utilizes the full width of my meager netbook monitor. This is good.

On the other hand, the menu now shrinks to a pop-down bar across the top of the page. Nice, except I have the same thing for my browser, again, in order to maximise the workspace on the netbook. When I try to highlight your menu to move to a new folder, all too often I drop the browser menu in too, and have to surgically edge my mouse pointer to the desired location without causing one or the other menus to disappear. This is frustrating.

I thought I had you beat in some small way when I remembered that I had the "Note In Reader" bookmark in my browser. Out of curiosity, I pressed it to see what would happen and a note appeared informing me that "This feature was no longer supported". Okay. Except there was no way to close it!! None. No little X to click and clicking around the page did nothing. Eventually I had to click to a new page entirely to make it go away. This too is frustrating.

Finally, I saw that I could still star items after the update, a feature I really only use so I can go back and read or watch articles and videos at a later date if I don't have time just then. Except when I came back to watch them I couldn't find the option to view my starred items! It took me a lot of searching through menu options, but I finally uncovered where it was hidden. It wasn't too difficult to uncover in the end, but it was, once again, frustrating.

And there we have it. New Google Reader. Three strikes and you're out.

I look forward to finding and using your replacement, of which Hive Mined is looking most promising.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. I'll swim away, never fully understanding why you stopped Feeding us.

Denis Ryan.