Hacker News Reader

Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

Do the benefits of an RSS reader really need explanation? Or is he simply hoping to hear some unexpected input from this?

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He's asking for specific elements of the reader that people found useful, enjoyable, easy to use. I'd say that's valuable. How is it not?

So like, the "Subscribe" button, and the list view?

That's what was useful. I really don't get what he's aiming for here... obscure features that may have existed that only some people thought were useful?

Weirdly enough, none of the readers I tested can replicate that. Qbix (list-view takes too much space, not available in "show all") and The Old Reader (no equal indent blog name -> post title in all view, shows no text snippets in list view) come closest.

Especially TOR looks like a great replacement but it's still pretty overloaded.

> There are 25746 users in the import queue ahead of you.

And it has no "Export" as of right now.

edit: Formatting

Okay, why did I write Qbix? What I meant was bazqux [1] and I just got a mail that list view in all is now available and they are thinking about offering a more condensed view :)

[1] http://bazqux.com/

No, I agree, I just hope he doesn't hear "I liked that the list of feeds is on the left" and think that's the takeaway. Not that, you know, it's an RSS reader that people had gotten used to.

Wall of text from sources I have subscribed. When I press 'f' it embiggens that text to cover the whole screen. j/k for navigation. If he had spent a couple of minutes on Google Reader he'd know.

Why doesn't he just ask the google reader staff?

Developers and designers don't necessarily know what their users like.

You're assuming there was a Google Reader staff.

Someone has to know where all the light switches are to turn them off.

Different people appreciate different things. Some of the use cases that people are glowing about leave me cold.

It never hurts to ask, you can always be surprised.

I interpreted the post as "Why does everyone care about Google Reader? Why Google's instead of the myriad of other available RSS services?"

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