I have tried many RSS readers and somehow always returned back to my favourite, Google Reader. But while it follows the ’simple and functional’ mantra like all other Google products, I’ve always felt that the GR interface was crammed. It needed — to use a designing term — white space. And that’s exactly what Feedly, a Firefox add-on, provides.
MAGAZINE-LIKE INTERFACE
After installing Feedly, I signed in with my Gmail account. Feedly immediately synced my existing subscriptions. The feeds I subscribed to using Feedly, also showed up when I logged in using Google Reader.
Coming to the interface: Google Reader has a Windows Explorer-like feel… full of lists. In Feedly, on the other hand, feeds are organised like a magazine. On each page, three stories are highlighted followed by a list of other posts. This is mch more pleasing to look.
While Google Reader (left) is full of lists, Feedly (right) has a magazine feel to it
The main navigation bar is at the top with nine buttons. Think of it as a Taskbar. The first one is ‘Digest’. By clicking on this, I was able to see the latest stories from all my feeds. The other buttons basically are the same as folders in Google Reader. So, by clicking on ‘Technology’ I was able to view only those feeds that I had put in the technology folder — Mashable, TeCrunch, GigaOm, etc — in Google Reader. The column at the right displayed names of individual feeds. Clicking on, say, Mashable displayed feeds only from that website, and not from the others.
Clicking on 'Technology' in the top navigation bar displays posts from feeds that I had classified under the technology folder in Google Reader
MORE SOCIAL
Feedly also is a much more social app than Google Reader or for that matter any other RSS reader. Normally, to see what other people have commented, I go to the website itself. However, in Feedly, below indivdual posts, I could now see what was being mentioned in Twitter, follow comments made by people in Friendfeed, Google Reader, Delicious, Digg and, of course, the website itself.
Share posts you like with your Delicious, Twitter, and Facebook buddies directly from Feedly
I could also share the posts I liked directly to my Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, and Evernote accounts.
Feedly is not without its chinks. For example, the top three posts highlighted separately are not necessarily the latest posts. But overall Feedly gets two thumbs up for improving the overall design and making the whole experience more social.