I really liked google reader’s “click to read” behavior, it would mark a item read when you click on it, and unread items above it would disappear (or scroll off screen).
I subscribe to several feeds that are primarily links, the current reader seems to almost be the worst case for this kind of feed.
- I get a view of some number of unread items
- I click the first one, the link opens in a background tab
- I click the second one, etc until all the visible links have been opened
- now if I want to open the next link in the feed I have to scroll, and as I scroll the mouse may be over the story and now it is marked as read
It would be great if newsblur better supported this kind of flow