10.09.2005

Design

Google, please take some design lessons!

Google Reader made its public debut this week and I was unimpressed. They seemed to have focused on AJAXing everything in their dev queue without much regard for UI. Not that there's anything wrong with AJAX but, it does seem as if their focus on development has diverted much of their attention away from refining Google Reader's UI in this clunky Flash-like app.

For some inconceivable reason, they decided to restrict the ability to read/scan all of your feed sources into a shallow peephole which you'll need to scroll through in order to view in its entirety. They tried to address the navigational issues by offering non-mnemonic keyboard shortcuts (n - page down, p - page up ... huh?) that take a while to memorize and feel more like a series of strokes required to execute a video game fatality move. It would have been nice if the Reader also allowed the user to file the sources into user-sortable categories. I guess I'll stick with my current feed readers (NetNewsWire, Sage, Thunderbird) for the time being.

Even their much-venerated search page has room for improvement. Just take a quick test drive of Inquisitor to see what I mean.

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