Wizard's Blog

Yesterday Google released an update to Reader.  The colors have changed, the corners are less rounded and they rearranged things a bit.

I'm not a big fan of the new color scheme - it's a very stark white whereas I found the old light blue soothing.  I also preferred the rounded corners and drop shadows, it made everything feel softer.

I don't have any numbers to back this up, but the new Reader does seem to be faster.

Google Reader refresh button

I like most of the layout changes, except that now the "Refresh" button is sandwitched between two other buttons.  I don't know about how other people use Reader, but I press "Refresh" a lot.  I almost never use "Mark all as read", and it would be a horrible thing to accidentally press, so why is it so close to the "Refresh" button?  The "View settings" button wouldn't be so catastrophic to accidentally click, but I also would hardly ever use it, so it makes no sense where it is.

Speaking of the Refresh button, why can't new items just be automatically added to the bottom of the list?  That has always annoyed me, and I keep expecting them to fix it, and they never have.

Finally, when you move the mouse over feed it highlights yellow, exactly the same as when a new iteam appears in the feed.  I don't know a lot about design but that seems bad.

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