Redesign is great, but

idea
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I really like the redesign but I was sad to see that a few of my biggest pet peeves about the site are still very much alive.

  1. The most important one: It boggles my mind that the current/active article is less-bold than unread articles. The eye is drawn to bold! That’s why it’s bold! Why do you make it harder to read the current article?
  2. Another way in which I find it difficult to track the current article happens when there are several short articles on the screen and for reasons beyond my understanding NewsBlur hasn’t loaded more articles, so when I press ‘j’ to navigate to the next article and I keep my eyes looking at the same spot nothing happens. Instead the next article becomes less bold and I become confused. I very much like the way Google Reader handle(s/d) this which is to move the current article to the top spot always.
  3. What is that list at the bottom right that no longer has a Hide button? I never want to see it, but I can’t turn it off permanently. Why did you take away the hide button?
  4. It seems like I often have to hit ‘r’ to get more articles even when NewsBlur knows I have more unread articles, I’m not sure why.
  5. I realize this is a long-shot, but it would be amazing if you allowed us to toggle keyboard shortcuts. I never ever want to use whatever the arrow key is mapped to for NewsBlur, but I do want to use it for HoverZoom and NewsBlur wins and frustrates me every time because whatever the arrow keys do is nothing I ever want NB to do.

Not very pleased that I have to sign up for a second account to give you feedback on a service I pay for.

1 Like
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I think you’ll like the List view better. But to hide the story titles pane, use shift+t. I’m thinking about a full screen mode that just hits shift+t and shift+u for you.

As for keyboard shortcuts … I suggest you reload. I just deployed customizations. Blogging it tomorrow morning.

As for the second account, why? Feedback is linked from the dashboard.

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Thanks for the response, but you ignored my most important request. What’s up with de-bolding? I put my list in order of importance for me. The ‘j’ thing drives me crazy daily. Could you please respond to these?

I don’t like List view at all. I want to read the stories, not see the headlines. The “All site stories” is the thing I was referring to in point 3. List view seems to make that take over.

I reloaded and right now shift-u toggles the left bar, but when you toggle it back it doesn’t move the articles back over in the latest Chrome on Win7.

The second account: I don’t live having to have yet another set of credentials and yet another company who wants to send me emails.

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I’m trying to figure out how the j key is broken. I use it and it works fine, so there must be something about those stories that trips up the heuristic to load the next page. I’m going to need as much info as possible. How about the next time it happens, take a screenshot (make sure I can see the scrollbars!).

As for your top item, well, that’s the design. It went through many iterations and I’m quite happy with where it ended up. You’re free to apply your own style if you have the means. But otherwise, I very much like the non-intrusiveness of the story header. And I don’t like showing the selected story differently in the Feed view, only in the story titles pane. Makes you feel like you have to control too many things.

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I think I see part of the issue. I was going to use Skitch to take some screenshots for the ‘j’ thing and the de-bolding on Mac is much less intense. Are you developing only on Mac? It’s still extremely confusing and your explanation only makes it more confusing.

Why would the current header be less “intrusive” (to use your word) than the unread stories? Shouldn’t the current thing stand out more than the non-current things?

I’m really baffled by your explanation. You say “I don’t like showing the selected story differently in the Feed view” and yet that’s precisely what I’m complaining about. The current story IS displayed differently.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s278/s…

The top story there is less bold than the other two (unread) stories. My eye is drawn away from the top story to the more bold items.

Here’s an example of one of the ‘j’ bugs:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s278/s…

I never scroll, I just use ‘j’ and very frequently I’ll end up with half of the old article still in view or this will happen (this is what I was describing in my OP):

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s278/s…

That was taken after hitting ‘j’ again right after taking the first “j” bug screenshot. Notice that the “Hangouts App” article is now less bold which is how I know it’s the currently selected thing.

This is not the best example of another fairly frequent ‘j’ bug, but it works:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s278/s…

Notice how the Nexus 7 “feed title” is half-covered by the “Nexus 4” one?

I was able to re-create all but my original ‘j’ bug report in just the last few minutes. I’m amazed that you aren’t already familiar with these issues. If it helps at all, I only use Feed view.

Also, you didn’t respond to this, are you already aware of it?

I reloaded and right now shift-u toggles the left bar, but when you toggle it back it doesn’t move the articles back over in the latest Chrome on Win7.

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shift-u toggle-back has the same issue on Mac chrome.

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Also, I neglected to mention that in the case of the overlapping “feed header” problem, the text of the older article is shown under the “newer” feed header. In other words, using the specifics of the examples the Nexus 7 article text is still shown even though the “next” article (nexus 4) has been "j"ed to, but only the header for the Nexus 4 article has moved up.

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Pre-“j”:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s278/s…

Post-“j”:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s278/s…

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This one shows 2 of the ‘j’ bugs in one screenshot. This is an example of my original bug report. http://i.imgur.com/oFaAlQk.png Notice the double “programming” header at the top and the fact that the current article isn’t at the top.

I continue to be confused that you think de-bolding the current thing is better than bolding the current thing. I’d even settle for keeping them the same.

I’d appreciate a response to these bug reports.

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I really need to see full screenshots for them to be helpful. I need to compare unread counts to story titles to what you see in the Feed list. Also, embedding them directly in your comment (you can upload images right here) will help. Anyway, I’m on the j issue, but I need screenshots that show me more information. Make sure to include story titles. I need to see if you’re at the bottom and why it isn’t triggering automatically.

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The last one (imgur) is a full screenshot, right?