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The NewsBlur Redesign
- djanogo 13y agoThis could be very well be just me, there are too many clickable things on screen, the UI seems overwhelming.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bazzargh 13y agoIt's not just you. Almost my entire interaction with google reader is hitting the space bar. After hitting 'u' to get rid of the rest of the ui. Newsblur does the spacebar thing, (Feedly doesn't), but I can't see a way of getting rid of everything but the river of news.
- mkr-hn 13y agoIt's still nothing like what I'm looking for in an RSS reader, but I'm sure it's good for whoever it's designed for.
- tristan_louis 13y agoSam, Thanks for making a great product (was worried in the early days after the Reader meltdown that you wouldn't scale) into something worth paying for again and again. You're really turning NewsBlur into the one to beat and are making it easier to not miss Google Reader. One feature request: integrate Buffer :)
- conesus 13y agoHere's The Verge's article on the redesign launch: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350208/how-sam-clay-and-newsblur-survived-the-google-reader-shutdown-redesign http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4350208/how-sam-clay-and-n... Little by little sure does add up. I've been working on the redesign for iOS, android, and both the web app and blurblogs (blurblog example: http://samuel.newsblur.com http://samuel.newsblur.com) for months now. But by committing every day it builds up. That's been the past four years now. My favorite part of this whole business is the free insurance policy. If I were to get hit by a bus (or god forbid, decide to stop supporting NewsBlur), you or somebody with the necessary resources could have a copy up and running by taking advantage of NewsBlur's open-source repo: http://github.com/samuelclay http://github.com/samuelclay
- LaSombra 13y agoWhen I got the news about Google Reader being discontinued I tested around 4 alternatives. Having tried NewsBlur I thought the web UI was perfect for my style of RSS reading and it was fast enough for my needs. The Android app is the icing on the cake. I paid 36 bucks, the extra, to support a product that I use every single day for more than 10 hours a day, a product I enjoy using and would contribute if I had the knowledge or time. Thank you very much Samuel, you are doing a very fine job and I am more than happy in helping the only way I can/know right now. NOTE: I am not affiliated to NewsBlur or Samuel Clay in any way. Just a very happy customer here.
- aravenel 13y agoAlso a happy user here. Newsblur is by far the best replacement for high-volume RSS power-users that I have found. And the fact that it's open source so I can 1) satisfy my curiosity as to how he is doing things and 2) install myself if the site ever goes belly-up is just icing on the cake. It's definitely not perfect, but it gets better every day. Performance has notably improved over the last month or so. Kudos to Samuel for a great product. Hopefully someday I'll be able to contribute a bugfix or something to help.
- kokey 13y agoAs a Google Reader refugee, I've tried out Feedly and Newsblur, and at the time Feedly was closer to what I wanted from Reader. Now, the redesigned NewsBlur totally ticks all my boxes, very nice.
- MekaiGS 13y agoThanks for the hard work!. About the new Android app, has it been pushed to Google Play yet? It still shows the app was last updated on the 10th.
- jdcryans 13y agoCongrats Sam! Funny meeting you virtually ;)
- julnepht 13y ago
- der3k 13y agoLove the pricing part of the page (http://www.newsblur.com/ http://www.newsblur.com/): Feed poor Shiloh - Free Account: She goes hungry Premium Account: Home cooked meals of green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, and brown rice
- mcintyre1994 13y agoLooks like it's working, they are some incredible conversion numbers. 5,714 Premium vs 7,606 Standard.
- IvyMike 13y agoI was idly thinking that $24 a year is just north of what I think my dad would pay. If the price was slightly lower I think I could talk him into it. And then it occurred to me that there could be a pricing model that doesn't scale linearly with number of users, but becomes (slightly) cheaper the more people use the service. I guess I've never seen the concept "economy of scale" applied to a web service as a whole. In other words, "If we get over 10000 paid users by next year, the price will go down to $20 a year. If we get over 20000 by next year, the price will go down to $18 a year." Etc. The cons: Shiloh gets less money in the short term. The pros: Everyone has motivation to recommend the product to their friends. This might outweigh the loss of per-unit revenue. Like I said, this is just idle thoughts, and there might be some way to game the system, but I just thought I'd throw it out there for your consideration.
- conesus 13y agoMaciej Ceglowski actually did the opposite with Pinboard, in that the signup fee increases over time. I worry that with a decreasing signup fee, you incentivize potential early-adopters into waiting longer until the price drops.
- fakeer 13y agoMaybe if they bring the peice down to $1/month or $12 or $10 an year then the number of users might just g up where they are aiming to go. BTW, I have a paid a/c at FeedBin and no complaints till now. Will keep an eye on NewsBlur and some others.
- highace 13y agoI'm gonna be that guy - I prefer the appearance of the blue version. Things stand out more, it's seems easier to parse. The grey looks all washed out and nothing really sticks outs. The layout of the right-hand panel is an improvement though, definitely.
- conesus 13y agoI went back and forth between both for a couple months and I can assure you that the new design is much better. It looks overly subtle now, but after your eyes and brain get used to it, you'll think the blue one was hideous.
- LaSombra 13y agoHi Samuel, maybe you can post the CSS for the blue design to use with Stylebot, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm.... Or even better, a guide to the CSS classes so we can use customize and share our customizations using Stylebot. :)
- BCM43 13y agoThis might be more work for you, but it's open source and tracked with git. You could find the old CSS and do it yourself.
- joshschreuder 13y agoI agree that the new styling a lot better with regards to positioning and sizing etc. but the colour scheme doesn't have enough contrast IMO. But I'll give it some time to get used to :)
- BHSPitMonkey 13y agoFor a future update, it might be nice to have styles be selectable/replaceable by the user (without client-side CSS mods).
- gfosco 13y ago
- tenpoundhammer 13y agoGreat job, I tried newsblur months ago and it didn't click for me. The redesign feels much more natural and snappy. It's a testament to how much features can flourish or suffer from minor performance tweaks and careful design decisions. For instance before, the bottom bar felt much more cluttered and difficult to understand. It created a sense of claustrophobia, with some subtle design tweaks it now feels like a helpful and compelling navigation feature.
- edderly 13y agoI had the same experience, this time around I'm going to give it an extended try and hopefully it will be worth parting with some cash for.
- jmduke 13y agoSam, I'm sure the past few months have been kind to you -- and with your dedication to the product, you assuredly deserve it. If you get the chance, I'd love to see some sort of before & after the Reader shutdown a la Patrick McKenzie's "Year in Reviews" (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/17/bingo-card-creator-etc-year-in-review-2010/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/17/bingo-card-creator-etc-y...). I'm sure you'd have quite a few insights to share.
- fournm 13y agoI've been using NewsBlur with a paid account since pretty close to the shutdown announcement for Reader and finally switched all of my bookmarks over. I'm happy with the web app, and honestly, the Android app is way better than what I was using when I was over on Reader. There's been a few bumps with servers but they've seemed pretty smoothed out for the most part lately. tldr keep up the good work, it's easy to recommend to other people looking to migrate. The redesign just makes it even easier.
- wodow 13y agoI was a little surprised to find no mention of "import" or "OPML" on http://www.newsblur.com/faq http://www.newsblur.com/faq , even though articles like e.g. http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-replacements http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-... say it's a feature.
- pedrocr 13y agoI moved over to newsblur after the reader news. One of the main features was that it was open source so what happened with reader wouldn't happen again, I could always self-host. After seeing how easy it is to move from one service to another I'm not so sure. Right now I'm a frustrated customer. All the effort seems to be going into flashy features and redesign while the actual function of a rss reader is not there yet. The basic feed stream doesn't work properly and never has. Items show back randomly after I've already read them and the infinite scroll doesn't work reliably. Bugs about this go ignored. I'll be trying feedbin.me next as I saw several recommendations on hacker news today and it seems to be a no fuss back-to-basics feed reader.
- conesus 13y agoSupport is handled every single day and I take these kinds of bugs very seriously. You should email me your username if you are experiencing this issue. Neither my error graphs nor my support forum show issues like unreliable infinite scroll or random stories. Please email me your info so I can get it fixed. I want everybody to have as positive an experience on NewsBlur as I do.
- pedrocr 13y agoI use the same username here as in newsblur. Here's the bug I submitted: https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load_new_items_after_the_initial_load_on_access https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load... It got one reply by "Stuart" a month ago asking me if I was a premium member, which I am. All other activity was by me. Here's the bug about read items coming back: https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_staying_marked_as_read https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_stayin... 75 people have marked it as affecting them, it has had 72 replies so far after being opened 2 months ago. Today's upgrade had a bunch of people complaining again with no reply. From what I gather the frontend don't retry the call to mark an item as read when it fails the first time so any problem contacting the backend results in items not being read. Today I had to mark some posts as read 5 or more times. I may end up using another feed reader anyway since I don't need or want all the newsblur features. That being said getting the "infinite scroll of unread posts" feature right should be a top priority for a feed reader and so far it hasn't been.
- popopje 13y agoi'm happy to pay but want to look at other options too - do any other reader alternatives offer web and android?
- hamburglar 13y agoFor what it's worth, I have tried to get started with newsblur a couple of times and ended up throwing my hands up. Just now, I downloaded the new android app, thinking it would be better, and I am unable to complete signup. The ui makes it nearly impossible to get focus into the "username" field because I can only see a sliver of it after the soft kayboard scrolls it up, and no matter what I enter, it says "please enter an email address" and makes me start all over. Not to mention it keeps randomly flipping me back to the "I need to log in" mode of the UI, which is quite frustrating. I can't say your signup flow (or your web site on my android browser, which is a total disaster) bodes well for the attention to detail for something as complicated as a news reader.
- lloeki 13y agoPreviously in the Android app I could not "mark all as read" as it was an instant core dump. Now that this works, I do have unread items in the various folders and 'all items', but the badge counters insist on saying '0'. Add a number of glitches here and there on the web (and really I don't use it via the browser often) and it just doesn't feel robust (and this is a shame, because I want to like it).
- Hansi 13y agoStill looks like too much needless stuff going on, so I still prefer feedly.com as my Google Reader replacement
- rdl 13y agoI was delaying moving off of Google Reader since nothing else really seemed better (and newsblur was super slow around the announcement). I'm glad I waited -- the redesigned NewsBlur looks awesome, and I'll probably stick with it.
- werid 13y agofor over 15 years i've scrolled down webpages using the arrow keys. can't do this with newsblur. everything else about newsblur excites me and i want to explore it, but having the down arrow go to next story just breaks my usage so hard... sure i got a mouse. i try to avoid using it too much.
- oyvindeh 13y agoI totally agree with this. It's pretty much the only thing that bothers me about NewsBlur, and it bothers me a lot.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dochtman 13y agoNewsBlur is the best of the web-based bunch I've been checking out recently, but it's still... not quite there. For example, this glitch has been around for weeks: http://dirkjan.ochtman.nl/files/newsblur-glitch.png http://dirkjan.ochtman.nl/files/newsblur-glitch.png I'm also not sure it's quite fast enough yet. I've used FeedDemon and Reeder (and NetNewsWire before that) for so long I'm really used to low-latency feed UI. I think web UI can match that, but NewsBlur isn't quite there yet. I also think the new design, while much better than the old design, is still quite heavy, in the sense that there is a lot to take in, lots of little details. Personally, I really liked the more sparing design in for example Reeder for the Mac. It would be great if there was an option in the NewsBlur UI to point to a stylesheet (or an inline <style> block) that would allow me to play with customization a bit. Of course, I also haven't found anything better so far, so it looks like NewsBlur will still be my reader of choice for the foreseeable future.
- gadders 13y agoThe "Try Out Newsblur" button doesn't work in IE8.
- Kiro 13y ago"It’s a full scale redesign, too. And not just one of those redesigns where the icons get glossier and fonts, bolder." I think it looks the same but with different colors. From that description I was expecting something completely different.
- uddjatigmh 13y agoThanks for hard work! And the fact that it's open source, so I... However I think there are not necessary in it. You should to redesign it more simplicity,because some functions make people more confuse
- ForFreedom 13y agoThe design is so complicated to the reader.
- s0me0ne 13y agoNewsBlur is good, but I don't care for the dashboard opening each time I visit. I'd rather have it remember what I was reading last and open there the next time I login or visit. I switched to netvibes for now, but I don't like how netvibes wont pick up youtube embedded videos.