Google finally updated their web-based RSS Reader! The previous version of Google is just waayyyy to sucks. I have no idea why Google can come out with something like this.
The old Google Reader
The new version of Reader is way better than the old one. Now it looks more like a normal rss reader and the interface is quite similar to GMail. In the previous version, there is no category for you to select form. All feeds are jumbled up together, which something I don’t like since it is very hard to read the feeds.
The new Google Reader
The first thing that I notice is that now that include a “List View”! So far, I haven’t see any web-based RSS aggregator provide this kind of view. It is quite convenient if you just want to browse through all the headlines without read the description.
List View in Google Reader
When an item is clicked in the list view, the entire item will be displayed.
If you prefer the ‘normal’ view, you can switch to expanded view. It is good that Google actually let you to select the view option.
The expanded view
If you prefer to view all feeds together, just like the old one, you can select the view all item option. It also include a new column, which is the category that the item belong to. So, it is much easier to differentiate the news item.
Viewing all the items
Some other minor features that they include are Starred Item and Shared item. Starred Item is just like you Favorite while Shared item is to let you to share the news item.
I think that Google finally make their reader right. The new version is much more resemble a feed reader which improve readibility. And another thing is that the ‘navigation bar’ which stay at the top instead of scrolling. I notice that there are few web-based rss reader that can’t do that right. One feature that I hope that they’ll implement is that allow user to mark several items as read. Currently, you need to open it one by one or mark it all as read. Other than that, Google Reader is currently my No.1 web-based RSS reader. (But I still stick with offline reader for better speed)
