In common with a lot of people (three million and counting so far) I jumped to Feedly. I can't say I liked it much at first. The layout was clunky and far from intuitive. It worked, though, pulling everything smoothly and painlessly from Reader, so I stuck with it.
I forced myself to stop checking Reader and practiced going straight to Feedly. Just as well, because the other day when I went to the Google drop-down "More" menu from which I used to open Reader, Reader was gone.
So, I was using Feedly but not happily. Then two things changed. First, I got round to setting Feedly up on my 7" tablet. Wow! What a difference. Feedly on a tablet is just gorgeous. That whole "you're looking at a magazine" thing they were trying for, which looks just awful on a desktop monitor, works perfectly on the handheld screen. It feels so natural to use and looks utterly charming. It's a positive joy to use.
It's so enjoyable in fact that I was considering giving up blog reading on the desktop altogether and using the tablet even at home (currently I mostly only use it when out of the house). The problem with that would be commenting. I can and do comment from the tablet but I can't say it's pleasant so I tend to comment a lot less than I would if I was sitting in front of a real keyboard. Of course, that might be a good thing...
Then a couple of days ago Feedly issued an update for the desktop version, optimized for a range of browsers, which they said was in response to recent user feedback. Presumably from the those three million users they've gained from Google. I patched the new Firefox version and the result is that I'm now very happy indeed with Feedly.
The new layout is clean, elegant and eminently usable. I can see everything I need just where I need to see it, at a glance. Feedly is now not just a good replacement for Reader, it's a much superior product all round and I heartily recommend it.
I guess Google did us all a favor. Odd how ungrateful I feel.
Posts
