Your turn to help me –
Per your vote, I’m in the middle of switching from Bloglines to Google Reader. However, I’ve been v. unimpressed with Google Reader so far, and am wondering why you all like it so much.
So I’m hoping you can help me with the issues I’m having:
1. How can I make the stuff within the round-edged rectangle either disappear, or move to the bottom of the page? I don’t like how it moves the actual list of feeds to the bottom, forcing me to scroll a bit.
2. When I put multiple feeds in a folder, the posts are ordered by time posted, and I can opt to sort them by oldest or newest. How I’d like to sort them, however, is by feed. For ex, within the unrounded rectangle, I’d like to be able to read all the Grist posts first before going on to read all the Gristmill posts. Is there a way to do that?
3. Right now, Google Reader organizes my feeds alphabetically — but separates the folders from the feeds that aren’t in folders. I would like everything ordered A-Z, regardless of whether or not they are solo feeds or folders. How can I make that happen?
Google Reader fans: Tell me what I’m doing wrong, and what I need to do –
Update, 11/18/08: I’ve now adapted to Google Reader — and am now trying to make Firefox adapt to it too –
1. I don’t think that’s possible. Perhaps I have a lot more feed subscriptions than you, but I have to scroll no matter what, and I make use of the stuff at the top, so it works fine for me there.
2. Are you saying you want to be able to highlight a folder and have it sort all feeds in the view by feed? Why don’t you just click each individual feed if that’s the way you want to read it? That doesn’t strike me as particularly inconvenient or difficult.
3. Go to “Options” at the bottom left. If it’s set to sort alphabetically, now select “drag n drop” (if it’s on drag n drop, select alphabetically and then back to drag n drop). Now just stick the FIVE feeds (assuming that’s an accurate picture of your reader) not in folders where they should go alphabetically. If only five feeds aren’t in folders this seems like no issue that it’s not doing it for you automatically.
The way your sounding is the way I feel any time I switch from one program to a completely different one, even if the new one is vastly superior. But hey, there’s no accounting for taste. I just think these are minor issues that are magnified from the pain of changing from a interface you’re used to, to one you’re not. But I could be wrong.
Comment by Colinski — October 21, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
I actually have a lot more feeds — I just stopped transferring them over to Google Reader from Bloglines once I discovered the probs. And I really don’t feel like arranging all of them manually :(
A main reason people have folders instead of having indiv. feeds is so they don’t have to click on every indiv. feed — so doing things your way would basically defeat the purpose of having feeds for me. Some of my folders contain 30+ feeds, so clicking on each individually is indeed inconvenient, though not difficult, I suppose.
It basically sounds like I can’t get GR to do what I want — and I don’t really see any added benefits I’ve gained to make up for these new inconveniences…. Am I missing some awesome feature that’d make it all worthwhile?
Comment by Siel — October 21, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
1. You can’t remove that stuff, without taking away the entire left column
2. You can click on the first feed in a folder, press spacebar through the feeds, and after you read the last one, it’ll automatically take you to the next feed in the folder. Obviously if you are showing “all,” instead of just the “new,” this isn’t going to work.
3. Click on options at the bottom left, and choose sort A to Z. This alphabetizes my folders and individual feeds, as well as the feeds within the folders.
GR is kind of a pain in that even if you mark to keep something as new, the next time you scroll over it you have to do it again. The star function is pretty handy though, and I don’t think there’s an equivalent on bloglines. Otherwise, I prefer it b/c it’s linked to email, and one can do the “list” view for a fast skim.
Comment by yoel — October 22, 2008 @ 7:48 am
Assuming you’re browsing using Firefox, you can install Greasemonkey as an add-on, which allows user-generated scripts to modify web pages. It’s here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
Then you can search for a script that does what you want: http://userscripts.org/scripts/search?q=google+reader is a good starting point…
Comment by Jason — October 24, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
Yo — Good point about spacebar’ing thru the feeds — except this means I’ll have to leave all the folders expanded, meaning I’ll have to do more scrolling to read all my feeds. Hmmmm….
Jason — I DO have greasemonkey! It is the smiley thing at the bottom right corner of my screen, yes? He’s so cute and smiley — but I really had no idea what he does!
I’ve been looking thru the link you kindly sent, and tho I haven’t yet been able to find the specific apps I’m looking for, I’m pretty impressed with how many different scripts there are! Maybe adding some of those will make the switch to Google Reader worth it for me. I’m having a bit of a hard time evaluating the scripts to make sure they’re worth installing b/4 installing them tho, so this may take some time –
Comment by Siel — October 28, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
Hi Siel, as others have said, I don’t believe there’s a way to do exactly what you would like to accomplish with the sidebar in Google Reader.
One thing I would recommend doing though is to use Google Reader’s keyboard shortcuts. I know it sounds like a pain in the arse but if you really want to streamline your feed reading experience, it’s priceless!
For example, if you type g then t, it brings up all the tags and folders which you can then type ‘g’ to select your ‘grist’ folder. To expand/collapse a folder, you type shift+x. And to navigate to a feed within the folder, you use shift+n or p.
Again, it takes some time to get used to it but it’s definitely worth it in my opinion. To see all the shortcuts, just type shift+? in Google Reader.
Comment by The Closet Entrepreneur — November 2, 2008 @ 5:16 pm
BTW, I haven’t read through all the comments so my apologies if this is repeat info, but you can also drag and drop folders in your sidebar to arrange them as you wish.
Comment by The Closet Entrepreneur — November 2, 2008 @ 5:18 pm