I want to get the honest constructive criticism of the folks here at HN as I feel it would point out some weaknesses early in my game and help me grow as a developer.
So please, tell me what you liked or tell me what could be improved.
What does the site do? Why is this easier/better/nicer than X/Y/Z? I have no idea. What need or issue are you trying to address? Why should I use this over other services?
A reader for the lazy would ideally do something like NewsBlur (which is fabulous, BTW) and pick up my feeds from a competing service. Consider providing an 'import from Google Reader' option. You're asking me to add sites one by one, in a non-intuitive manner - if there's only one feed, just let me click 'subscribe' - don't bother giving me a (non) choice.
I like that you're loading the actual site within your app. However, I have a 13" screen at 1280x800 and there's all sorts of scrolling required, which makes for a messy experience. Gets worse when that lower frame is pulled up to view the site. Design for multiple resolutions.
From a usability perspective, the site is confusing. I've spent more time crafting this response than using the site because of this. I could possibly click on things and see what they do, but that's 'risky' and not lazy. For instance:
1. What do the up & down arrows do?
2. What does pull up mean?
3. I clicked on a link in a feed and nothing happened. Oh no, this site doesn't work! (If I hadn't scrolled down, I would not have realized the site had loaded in the lower 'box', which I also had to then 'pull up'. This process is not obvious or easy.) Consider an email inbox view - just titles to click on, and full previews in lower 'box'.
4. Keyboard shortcuts?
5. Why is the default post count only 3? Once read, a post remains in my view instead of minimizing itself. Infinite scrolling would be great to load more posts.
6. UI-wise, what happens once I have 30 feeds? How does your horizontal nav handle that?
There's more obviously, but this hopefully this is a start. It's always easier for someone (me) to criticize, so keep this in mind with my comments.