Google Reader is not good
I’m starting to get really hacked off with Google Reader. I’ve mentioned this already, but I thought I might fill in a few more reasons. You might be thinking: why haven’t these been submitted as bugs to the Reader team? Well, most of them aren’t really susceptible to that. I’ll come back to this point later.
The old version kept dying all the time: it popped up a “loading” screen and it never went away. Forced refresh sometimes brought it back, and sometimes didn’t. When the all-new exciting version came out I thought that this problem might be fixed: in fact, it’s actually got worse. I find Reader hangs probably once every three or four times I use it.
There’s no point in doing Ajax things if you have to wait 20 seconds for it to load. I’ve already ranted about this, though.
As far as I can tell, you can no longer skip to the next item by pressing space. Maybe this works for everyone else, because it ties into…
If you have All Items shown, and some new items have arrived since you clicked it, I can’t find a way to refresh the list of All Items. I have to switch to Home and then switch back to All Items again, with two long waits with a loading screen. Apparently “r” is meant to refresh, but that doesn’t do anything. I’ve tried “r” and alt+r and neither seem to help.
It gets confused about whether articles have unread items or not. See here:
I could not get Reader to show me this mysterious unread item, or to acknowledge that it wasn’t there. I tried a full refresh (just loading Reader again), I tried switching to Home, back to All Items, I tried showing the feed individually (which is what the screenshot shows). This also happened with other feeds; the only way I could get the supposed new items alert (the “1 new items” and the (1) in the left pane) to go away was to “View all items” (all of which appeared to be read) and then say “Mark all read”. Now, though, I’m left with the lingering suspicion that there really was an unread item and now I won’t ever get to read it.
(Plus: 1 new items? Hm.)
In terms of filing bugs: what should I do about that last one? I have no idea how to replicate it, I can’t give instructions. I could say “look at my Reader page and you’ll see it”, but then I basically can’t use Reader until I get an acknowledgement that the Reader team have diagnosed the problem, which I don’t want to do.
Anyway, as soon as I’ve got my customisations done to Rawdog, I’m switching. Sorry, Google team. I have to say that Gmail is increasingly getting confused and having to be full-refreshed or just hanging on the “Sending…” bit when trying to send a mail (it’s still an Ajax loading screen, even if it’s just in the top right hand corner). Makes me sad. If Google can’t make this stuff work, who can? Maybe I should look harder at the Yahoo stuff instead? They seem to be coming on strong recently.
Try control-r to refresh. I don’t use Google Reader myself, but if they’re using an accesskey hook to trap key presses, control-r might do it for you.
58 minutes later
Having just started using Google Reader, I am wondering what I am letting myself in for, but I haven’t hit any of the problems you have met so far.
I didn’t use the previous version, but space works as I expect it to, as it scrolls down the page, whereas j takes you to the next item.
60 minutes later
Oh, I meant to add that I used to have loads of problems with Unread counts being wrong with bloglines. Initially they responded to my reports and “fixed” the database, but then they stopped responding and I moved away from them.
I work as a support engineer, and it doesn’t have to be a bug for you to report a problem, as you are a user (poor, misguided, obviously done something wrong :) user) You shouldn’t need to reproduce it and log a bug, You just need the ability to log it as a problem. Google can then fix the problem with your database, and also try to work out what the bug is.
66 minutes later
You should try NetVibes
111 minutes later
It may well be a coincidence, but I’ve only started getting these [bugs/problems/issues] since I posted a comment on here recommending google reader. It used to work really well, but it seems to have gone to cock in the last couple of weeks.
119 minutes later
Paul: I understand what you’re saying about bugs, but i’m pretty firmly of the opinion that a bug which says “Reader is broken” and that’s it isn’t useful; it won’t be possible for the Reader team to replicate it, and then it’s just a bug you have to close because there’s not enough information…
2 hours later
I understand what you are saying about not wanting to log a bug that would be impossible for them to reproduce, but you still have an issue that needs fixing.
Say your Cable TV stops working. Do you say “well, I can’t phone up NTL or Cable and said that ‘Cable TV is Broken’ as it won’t be possible for them to replicate it”, or do you phone up and said “Oiy, fix my Cable TV”.
Of course, more likely if the cable tv kept breaking you’d be more likely give Sky a call and toss NTL into the bin, which is what you are doing here. :)
2 hours later
a) Your comments thing is broken, as it pre-filled this page with Sarabian’s details
b) I’m using Google reader entirely differently. My method has been to load up my OPML file, put the “Next >>>” button into my bookmarks toolbar, and then middle-click it 20 or so times until I run out of space in my tab bar, then flick though the tabs reading stuff.
3 hours later
Aquarion: interesting. It’s stock WP2.0; I haven’t done anything to it.
Paul: the very first thing that NTL would say is “don’t use it until we get there to look at it”, which is the problem; I don’t want to do that…
3 hours later
Aquarion has stolen my comment details. The fields are now blank.
Stuart: Well, that’s NTL for you and why I’m now with Sky. btw, I fully support your decision to change readers. If it is any good, you will let us know?
3 hours later
Nope, Aquarion must have sent them back again because I got Paul’s details too :-)
I am reading this discussion with interest since I’m writing an aggregator (on Django) for my 3rd year project this year.
4 hours later
Paul: I intend to document the hell out of what I’ve done, and release it, once it’s done :)
No idea what’s happening with the login details thing, btw. Sorry, all.
4 hours later
You should have a look at Newshuth.
2 weeks later