Google Reader’s great, but it could be even better

Here’s another screenshot (linked to a larger version; thank you Flickr).

This one shows some of the RSS feeds I follow, in Google Reader. I only started using that service recently, and I’m finding very compelling (and time consuming!) both on my desktop PC, as shown here, and on my mobile device, using the stripped down and rather splendid mobile interface. However, I think the desktop interface — if I can call it that — could be improved and made more usable.

Firstly, I’d like a “mark as read” (or “ignore”, with the same effect) button, so that I can skip over posts which look uninteresting, without having to open and then close them to do so. It could go to the right of the “star” icon (highlighted yellow — and what’s that for? I can find no explanation, other than references to apparent side-effects of using it, in the help pages).

Also, if I select the title of a feed , such as “BBC News | News front” (a truncation of …News Front Page”; marked in orange), surely I can reasonably expect the view of that feed to open, instead of the specific post? That would be the same action as when I select the feed’s title in the left-hand column. The post’s title, to the right of the feed title, is a large-enough target to work in its own right.

Lastly, there are two “refresh” buttons (each highlighted in red). These, stupidly, have different functions. The one in the left-hand column refreshes all the feeds, while the one at the top refreshes the feed I’m viewing. If I use the latter, it clears read items from the current feed view, but annoyingly that doesn’t happen if I use the former — what’s that about? Either the two buttons should have the same effect, or they should be labelled differently.

I’d like to let Google know what I think, but — in typical Google fashion — they don’t seem to provide a mechanism for me to do so.

Postscript: The URL provided by Google for my “publicly shared items” in Google Reader, which anyone can visit, is the mind-bogglingly unmemorable, untypeable and generally unfriendly http://www.google.com/reader/shared/03499548569546420688. Why can’t I have http://www.google.com/reader/shared/pigsonthewing ?

Spatial references to page layout considered harmful

This screenshot (linked to a larger version) shows a TechCrunch article in Google Reader, as it appears “out of the box” (apart from cropping, blurring irrelevant content and the addition of orange highlighting). Note the position of the logo, described as being “shown at right”.

In this era of mobile devices, freed readers and other such proxies — not to mention aural browsers and assistive devices with no spatial component — referring to the location of an element on the screen is stupid. Harmful, even.