The latest version of the Android reader truncates after two lines of the title with an ellipses. This is really annoying as it forces me to open each article and browse through the open articles, rather than just scrolling through the list of titles. This is especially a problem when reading fark.com, and you don’t want to piss those guys off.
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That’s the new design. It’s intended to show you only two lines. You can tap into the story to get more, but the variable height table rows on the feed detail (story list) view made it harder and more involved to scan headlines.
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That’s unfortunate. This makes it much harder for me to use the app. I will have to look at other readers, sorry. Up until this happened, I was really enjoying NewsBlur, even more than Reader.
Yeah, I’ve also had to consider moving on (at least temporarily) from Newsblur after the latest Android update. I also noticed the change you noted (and it does make scanning difficult for a few feeds), but my bigger problem is that on my 10" tablet, the font sizes used throughout the app have shrunk, and the story font even at the largest available size is just too small for me to use comfortably. Things look great on my phone – and I’d bet on a smaller tablet as well – but I use my large tablet for reading much more.
I’m not a big fan of feedly, but many of the Android apps I used with Google Reader now support it, and provide a superior tablet interface for my needs (text mode is much more important to me than social, for instance).
I would miss, though, the training of Newsblur and the superior web interface, so for now I am going to revert to a saved copy of the last app version – and hope that Sam will be soon be able to provide more options for that small percentage of us who use large Android tablets.
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This latest Android (2.5.0) works great on my GSIII. The smaller font sizes are perfect. In general the app is much more like a fluid reader–the headers on articles, the share/save buttons. Great improvements.
I completely agree with Samuel that limiting the headlines to two lines is a better design perspective.
Keep up the good work Samuel, and looking forward to search on the apps.
BTW, it doesn’t look like the What’s New text in the Play store got updated. The latest text only shows info for v2.1.
I updated the what’s new text for 2.5. Argh, it looks like it got eaten. I’ll rewrite it.
As a note, people will complain about changes no matter what I do. You have to think about all the people who aren’t miffed about the changes, and then think about all the people who now have a better experience due to the changes. On this, like everything else on NewsBlur, I have to trust my gut and it is very clear on what changes were needed on Android.
Or, you can make it an option and make all of the users happy instead of losing some of them.
I resist adding options, especially for things like this, for two reasons:
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I have to support options. Every time I change something, I have to test in every configuration of options. You’ll notice that on the web, the different views sometimes break when I fix the other views. This is due to having multiple options.
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Having lots of options is confusing. You’ve seen this before. Too many options means you end up choosing none of them. Every use open source software? They all suffer from too many options.
Listen, if you use NewsBlur you are saying that you trust me to make these decisions. If you don’t like the way I make decisions now, you certainly aren’t going to like them later when I make more decisions. If that means I lose a few users because I am simplifying the interface and making it match my design, then that’s the price I’m willing to pay. I don’t want anybody to leave, but I’m definitely not going to clutter the interface with lots of preferences that only a tiny minority even wants.
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I used NewsBlur because it was the product that met my needs the best. Once it no longer does that, I have to move on. Best of luck.