Nice Little Bloglines Visual Update
Friday, September 29th, 2006 by MR
I’ve been using Bloglines for at least 18 months now, which probably makes me one of their earliest “customers”. I thought their service was so amazing after a few days that I emailed support and said, “hey can I donate a few bucks, you guys rock!” and they thanked me, but declined. I’ve been using Bloglines as my primary RSS reader ever since.
As I do every morning, I loaded up Bloglines in a tab but noticed a few things that were different:
- Font-size in the left panel was decreased from 12px to 11px, still keeping Verdana as the typeface. This allows a few more sites to be listed above the fold. The “new article” count was decreased to 9px, a good call as well.
- Selected site names on the left now have a nice background and border applied to their row, letting the user keep mental note of what site they’re reading.
- The side panel now refreshes automatically after a set amount of time, with a transparent visual clue popping up to show how many new items were found. The side panel refreshed before, but the visual clueing is a new feature, and now it’s doing it without a refresh via Ajax.
- The ‘R’ key that normally refreshed the side panel now does so via Ajax instead of a page refresh, very nifty.
There are many online feedreaders out now, but in my opinion none of them do the core job of “reading RSS feeds” better than Bloglines. The simple two-pane interface using frames instead of Ajax, is cleaner and quicker than every other implementation I’ve seen. In the hustle and bustle of “Web 2.0″ and buzzword/feature pumping, it’s nice to see a company refining the user’s experience the way Bloglines is doing.
Reader Comments
5 Responses to “Nice Little Bloglines Visual Update”
I noticed the Bloglines update as well. It pales in comparison to what Google has done with their reader. I think that I may be switching from Bloglines.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:49 am
I noticed the changes, too - nothing major, but definitely useful. And I agree, I could never get into the Ajax RSS readers. Bloglines keeps checking up on new RSS feed items quite simple (and I don’t have to sync anything between multiple computers, which is the main reason I use an online reader in the first place).
September 29th, 2006 at 11:50 am
I just can’t get used to the different interface with anything besides Bloglines — I’ve been using it so long that it’s burnt into my brain :)
September 29th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Yeah, it’s an improvement, but they need soo much more. I mean, teal? frames? semi-shades(?)? There’s nothing wrong with a little realignment. The market has become tougher, so customers pay more detail to little things, like small design features.
It’s still the only reader I’d ever use though.. :)
September 29th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
The problem is that I have loved Bloglines ever since I started using it and I cannot switch away.
I tried those new-fangled readers with heaps of AJAX, bold colors, tags and all the tricks that Web 2.0 sites were using and it just plain sucked. Bloglines is like a reliable and sweet little donkey. It does its job without desperately trying to monetize everything or win new users over with checklists of jargon.
Teal? Irrelevant. Frames? Perfectly suits the site’s purpose. That weird pinstripe gradient? Ok, I admit that’s just creepy. Anyway, I heart Bloglines.
October 4th, 2006 at 6:31 am
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