Saturday, December 06, 2008

Google Reader and its revamped user interface

Google has improved the UI of one of their most popular service: Google Reader, their web-based RSS feed reader. Besides the slight changes in the look and feel, CPU load when accessing the service has decreased a lot.

In an Acer Aspire One, you can now really enjoy the site without your web browser becoming unresponsive once in a while. In an even less powerful device like the Nokia N810, your CPU stops being at the 100% all the time and, if you do not want the full view of the posts you can use the list mode. This mode allows you to view only the name of the origin web site for the post, and its subject and date, so you can avoid all the posts that are not attractive. This list view is an intermediate step between the traditional Google Reader "full web experience" and the simpler Google Reader Mobile.

The main difference is that Google Reader Mobile offers a list of links (one link for each post) and the selection of a post means loading a new page, while the new list view in the "full" Google Reader shows the content of the post using JavaScipt. Luckily, the use of Javascript all over the Google Reader site seems much lighter in terms of CPU consumption.

Great work!

No comments: