Ex Google PM criticizes new Reader layout

If you're on Chrome try out the extension I made to max out the much needed vertical space : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gkefcmejbgglfihaae...

Google does seem to be trying the "one size fits all" approach. While it may work on a grand scale, trying to standardize the look across their apps, it definitely falls short when you get into the particulars of each platform's individual needs. Beyond that, though, for their "new look" to significantly slow down my browser is unacceptable. New UI should not be so heavy that it materially affects the page's performance.

I use Google Reader a lot, and so found this critique of yesterday's UI rollout interesting. My own experience was not as full of grousing as this guy's, but I do have my own complaints.

His complaints are (1) of screen real estate having been reduced to something admittedly pretty insane, (2) increased number of clicks to share and (3) decreased privacy in doing so (he's incorrect about the last: you don't need to +1 prior to sharing; noted, he updates his post with a correction about this), and (4) lack of contrast of the grey on white of titles and links (to me titles appear black on white and links are underlined making them easily identifiable -- was this changed?).

As for complaint (2), integration of sharing in Google Reader and G+ means that there is necessarily going to be a bit of latency introduced, because you've actually got to do the work of choosing who to share with. This doesn't bother me: the precision and primacy of the circles concept in Google+ is what attracts me to it over the convolutions of exhibition on Facebook.

Lastly, as for the first complaint, regarding screen real estate: My usual daily objective in Google Reader is to be able to do triage on about 200 - 300 articles in less than 10 minutes. I am subscribed to a ton of feeds and in order to keep pace I need to consume headlines and form a general intuition about the content while doing as little reading as possible. I want to decide between (1) "this is interesting, I'll read it later" and (2) "this is not interesting, pass" on the order of milliseconds. I don't actually do any reading at all in Google Reader itself, so his screen real estate gripe doesn't really resonate with me. If I want to read an article I just re-tab (or in the case of some content, usually videos or music, star it) it and return to it later. His contrast complaint (4) would be relevant, but I'm not seeing it.

Which brings me to my own central complaint. Namely, general sluggishness. Because of the speed that I sift through articles, any delay between pressing the "j" shortcut which advances to the next unread article and actually advancing to that article is a really palpable, frustrating and significant. Such delays are frequent -- very frequent. I haven't actually looked into what the cause of this delay is computationally, but I'm fairly certain it's not a bandwidth issue, because Google Reader keeps itself loaded pretty far ahead of the current article you happen to have in focus.

In any case, as long as such delays exist, any UI issues are pretty much secondary to my use case.

The Reader team must be thanking their lucky stars that their product lives on and that Reader hadn't been given the chop like other non-mainstream services, e.g. Google Notebook, Code Search. Ultimately it's a techie tool and most internet users likely aren't aware of feeds let alone Reader.

I bet they agreed to any hurried G+ shoehorning as it's a sign Reader isn't being wound down.

The layout can be tightened up a little bit. I experience no significant lag when scrolling or changing feeds. Imo, the blogosphere is overreacting. I disliked the look and feel of the old one :)