Hacker News Reader

Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

Could you atleast describe what is better about Feedly, so not only the creator of NewsBlur, but also anyone looking to spend money on an RSS Solution gets your informed input?

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I briefly tried both.

* Feedly has a simple interface which is much more like Google Reader. But it depends on a plugin (or an app) rather than being an allwhere accessible website. Their Kindle Fire app seemed to load content extremely slowly, and its interface wasn't a simple list. And it's free, so I can't be a customer and I don't know how they earn money.

* NewsBlur is complicated and unresponsive. There are a lot of inscrutable unlabeled icons, and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse. It's a paid service - I can be a customer - but I don't know how sustainable NewsBlur will be with its current issues and with subscription as its only source of funding.

If NewsBlur seems solid by May, I'll gladly pay them. If Feedly seems less like a faceless data-miner by May, I'll use them.

"and I don't understand why an arrow follows the mouse."

Really? It is a feature for better reading, so you can can easily see which line you are.

Make sense now that someone points it out! For those who mouse click to mark reading point.

Aha. It somehow hadn't occurred to me to click on that triangle. I'm still not sure it's a useful-to-me feature, but it at least makes a little more sense now. It's less annoying once locked down, anyway. Maybe it should default to being locked down somewhere and only unlock the first time you click on it, rather than default to floating around freely.

You mean so as to remember where you were last reading are on the page? But if you use the mouse to switch browser tabs, that arrow moves up to the top of the page, and if you use any of the controls at the bottom, it moves down. I guess one could very carefully leave the window at a specific place so as to preserve that arrow's position, but it's not an obvious thing to do. How are you using this feature that makes it an improvement over just letting your pointer itself mark the current reading position?

Try http://rssident.com

I am working on making the UI more user friendly and adding OPML import/export.

It's going to be supported by advertising with a subscription service for premium features and no ads.

I like the predictive aspect Personally, I'm looking for something with a GR atom API, possibly to even run the existing GR frontend against, not a new UI with a different focus (I would prefer one focusing on curation and workflow over social or sharing).

I was attracted by the basic looking design, but I can't work out how to do anything. Why am I subscribed to a huge number of random feeds? How do I get rid of them? How do I view the content of the feed instead of opening a new window on the original site?

If you haven't added any feeds to your favorites then viewing 'My Favorites' shows all feeds by default.

Still working on the UI to show the article content and links to attached files.

I love NewsBlur but I found it a bit busy in the UI. It seemed like a lot for what it really needed to do. That being said, Feedly's minimalistic UI was far better. However, Feedly is a bit slower when there are tons of stories on the screen.

Overall I found Feedly to be better.

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