Whitney Hess, UX Coach - Latest Comments in Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

heeso — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:37:32 -0000

Please, can you PM me and tell me few more things about this, I am really lover of your blog...

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:54:27 -0000

I tend to disagree....or should I say we use our "readers" differently. I follow many blogs which is industry related. This means I don't need to scan each day on what is the latest hottest thing, but instead I want to keep track of every single update made on a blog since my last visit. I also like to sort them "oldest first" as some postings might be building on top of each other.
With GR you have to do it with each and every feed separately! With bloglines you can set that default in one place for all your feeds. Also, with GR, if you display oldest first and there is new feed coming in GR shows you 2 month old messages which you "marked read". Now it becomes a mission of scrolling down, GR loading, scrolling, loading until you get to the new stuff. With bloglines it ONLY shows the new stuff, but has an option to read older stuff and then you can also specify how far back you want to go. For my needs I would say GR suck big time! Anyway, just thought I'll add my 2cents. Good post anyway.

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Mark and Jennifer Lopez — Tue, 18 May 2010 09:39:25 -0000

Thanks for doing all the leg work - Google should be paying you a commission.

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Erica — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:37:39 -0000

Interesting. I prefer feeddemon/newsgator myself - I can use feeddemon on my desktop, and the newsgator web service on my laptop or wherever I am. I have never liked google reader, and while it may be more usable in ways, quite honestly, I find the fonts, colours, and layout ugly. I like the nicer images and colours of Bloglines more. What kind of UX designer does that make me lol

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

sabowtage13 — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:32:06 -0000

@Matt

Agreed. I had to switch from bloglines, which I prefer, because my feeds weren't updating.

I'm looking to see if I can find an offline reader that syncs with either google reader or bloglines and isn't a pain in the neck to use.

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Dv0rsky — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:25:20 -0000

Hey, great article and info.

I have made a switch from Bloglines to Google Reader yesterday and have come to almost the same results like you did.

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Matt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:09:44 -0000

Thank you for the nice feature-by-feature comparison. I think you sold me on switching to Google Reader.

Is it just me, or has Bloglines been having a lot of problems over the past 3-4 months? I've been trying to find out if others have been having the same problem as me, but Google searches haven't turned anything up. At least once a week, I am unable to log into Bloglines for hours at a time - from any computer or from any network. The login page loads fine, but after I enter my credentials and click login, the page just sits there trying to load. There are also times where I'm already logged in and I can't Pin any posts and trying to load a feed takes close to a minute. I've submitted at least 3 requests for help and nobody ever responds to them. It's almost like Bloglines WANTS me to switch to Google Reader.

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Michael J. Pratt — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:52:54 -0000

My biggest criteria to evaluate & compare is whether you like having feeds divided up by folder and that remains the domain of personal preference. I think "star" is misnamed, a common problem in UX. GR didn't put much thought into what they wanted the function to mean. Save & Pin do a better job, as you said. I'm also not sure I'd give as much weight to "settings", etc as we're probably more likely to sacrifice bad settings mgt for a good reading experience. Aggregation is also a personal pref thing: My feeds are so diverse, I can't imagine seeing them all together. All said, Bloglines has been in beta for so long, I think they forgot about it. It needs a great deal of work. Bear in mind, this is all from a person who doesn't like Gmail...an indicator

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

sandieman — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:08:07 -0000

Blog This is Needed! Neither of them have it and it would complete the circle of blogging: http://www.robertsandie.com...

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Vivek Kumar — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:06:23 -0000

Thanks for the info - wanted to use a news year and now I know what to use

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Alitta — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:42:49 -0000

I was searching for "bloglines + import" and I came across your blog. It was really helpful. Thanks a lot :)

Alitta

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Vw — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:37:28 -0000

Actually I think mobile bloglines is much better than mobile google reader on a windows mobile device.

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Gail Desler — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:44:45 -0000

Thanks, Whitney, for the comparison. I've been slowly making the transfer from Bloglines to GR. Your write up is speeding up that process.

Gail Desler

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Todd — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:19:37 -0000

Nice, succinct, to the point comparison. Thank you!

Re: Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation

Chris Cree — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:07:27 -0000

Great comparison, Whitney.

I'd switched to GR from Bloglines before the Beta version came out. I thought about changing back until GR finally added a search function. (Never could understand how Google could have a product with no search.) Google Reader is a great product for my needs.

I'll be pointing clients to your post here when they ask for a feed reader recommendation.