The Reader, Part 1

With Google Reader’s demise little more than three months away, I have to start looking for a new reader for my blog feeds. There are quite a few out there, but they have to meet my stringent standards if they want me to use them. So I’m going to spend a week with the different possibilities and see which one is the best.

What, did you think it was about book readers? Sorry, but there are more important things to worry about right now.

First up, Feedly.

First of all, I used this in Chrome so your mileage may vary depending on your browser.

Pros

---I was able to import my blog feeds from Reader (I hope this sticks after it disappears).

---Very easy to access my lists and change them around (easier than Reader, in fact).

---They have this thing called the Feedly Mini, which is how you can share things on Twitter.
---Navigation is very easy.
---I like how it shows only the blogs with new posts in my blog list. Usually those are the only ones I want to see and it’s easy to click if I want to see the others.
---There's a wide variety of options to view the posts with.

Cons

---The presentation could be better—themes have fancy names, but just change the color. Whee.
---Posts come up in the standard Feedly font and colors rather than whatever the blogger chooses.

---I don’t like that it sorted my lists alphabetically. I have my own order.

---I hate that I can’t go to my reader with the click of a button anymore. Not that I’ll be able to do so after July…
---It would be nice if the Feedly Mini, I don’t know had the ability to take you to the Feedly homepage. Seriously, how is that not there?
---The next button doesn’t actually click to the next one in your list. It’s...confusing. I still haven’t quite figured it out.

Overall, it’s kind of a watered-down Reader clone. Not great, not terrible. I’ll use it if I don’t find anything better and I won’t complain about it toomuch.