Goodbye Reader

Goodbye, Google Reader. It was fun while it lasted.

Long ago, I used desktop RSS readers. I was only subscribed to my friends’ blogs back then anyway, so it didn’t matter that I could only read them from my home computer. But then RSS feeds started appearing on news sites, and tech blogs started appearing about things related to my work. And smartphones took over the world, and I wanted to be able to synchronise my reading list everywhere. There were a few different services that competed for my attention, but Google Reader was the best. It was simple, and fast, and easy, and it Just Worked in that way that Google products often do.

I put up with the occasional changes to the user interface. Hey, it’s a beta, and it’s still the best thing out there. Hey, it’s free, what can you say? I put up with the fact that from time to time, they changed the site in ways that were sometimes quite hostile to Opera, my web browser of choice. I put up with the fact that it had difficulty with unsigned HTTPS certificates (it’s fine now) and that it didn’t provide a mechanism to authenticate against services like LiveJournal (it still doesn’t). I even worked around the latter, releasing my own tool and updating it a few times until LiveJournal blocked it (twice) and I had to instead recommend that people switched to rival service FreeMyFeed.

But the final straw came this week when Google “updated” Reader once again, with two awful new changes:

1. I know that they’re ever-so-proud of the Google+ user interface, but rebranding all of the other services to look like it just isn’t working. It’s great for Google+, not-bad for Search, bad for GMail (but at least you can turn it off!), and fucking awful for Reader. I like distinct borders between my items. I don’t like big white spaces and buttons that eat up half the screen.
2. The sharing interface is completely broken. After a little while, I worked out that I still can share things with other people, but I can’t any longer see what other people are sharing without clicking over to Google+. This sucks a lot. No longer can I keep track of which shared items I have and haven’t read, and no longer can I read the interesting RSS feeds my friends have shared in the same place as I read (and share) my own.

So that’s the last straw. Today, I switched everything over to Tiny Tiny RSS.

Originally I felt that I was being pushed “away” from Google Reader, but the more I’ve played with it, the more I’ve realised that I’m being drawn “towards” Tiny Tiny, and wishing that I’d made the switch further. The things that have really appealed are:

• It’s self-hosted. Tiny Tiny RSS is a free, open-source solution that you host for yourself (or I suppose you can use a shared host; there are a few around). I know that this is a downside to most people, but to me, it’s a serious selling point: now, I’m in control of what updates are applied, when, and if I don’t like the functionality of a part of the system, I can change it – I’m in control.
• It’s simple and clean. It’s got a great user interface, in an understated and simplistic way. It’s somewhat reminiscent of desktop email clients, replacing the “stream of feeds” idea with a two- or three-pane view (your choice). That sounds like it’d be a downside, until you realise…
• …with great keyboard controls. Tiny Tiny RSS is great for keyboard lovers like me. The default key-commands (which are of course customisable) are based on Emacs, so if that’s your background then it’s easy to be right at home in minutes and browsing feeds faster than ever.
• Plus: it’s got a stack of nice features. I’m loving the “fresh” filter, that helps me differentiate between the stuff I’ve “saved for later” reading and the stuff that’s actually new and interesting. I’m also impressed by the integrated authentication, which removes my dependency on FreeMyFeed-like services and (because it’s self-hosted) lets me keep my credentials securely under my own control. It supports authentication using SSL certificates, a beautiful and underused technology. It allows you to customise the update frequency of your feeds, so I can stalk by friends’ blogs at lightning-quick rates and stall my weekly update subscriptions so they don’t get checked so frequently. And unlike Google Reader, it actually tells me when feeds break, so I don’t just “get no updates” for a while before I think to check the site (and it’ll even let me change the URLs when this happens, rather than unsubscribing and resubscribing).

Put simply: all of my major gripes with Google Reader over the last few years have been answered all at once in this wonderful little program. If people are interested in how I set up Tiny Tiny RSS and and made the switchover as simple and painless as possible, I’ll write a blog post to talk you through it.

I’ve had just one problem: it’s not quite so tolerant of badly-formed XML as Google Reader. There’s one feed in my list which, it turns out, has (very) invalid XML in it’s feed, that Google Reader managed to ignore and breeze over, but Tiny Tiny RSS chokes on. I’ve contacted the site owner to try to get it fixed, but if they don’t, I might have to hack some code to try to make a workaround. Not ideal, and not something that everybody would necessarily want to deal with, so be aware!

If, like me, you’ve become dissatisfied by Google Reader this week, you might also like to look at rssLounge, the other worthy candidate I considered as a replacement. I had a quick play but didn’t find it quite as suitable for my needs, but it might be to your taste: take a look.

Oh, and one more thing: if you used to “follow” me on Google Reader (or even if you didn’t) and you want to continue to subscribe to the stuff I “share”, then you’ll want to subscribe to this new RSS feed of “my shared stuff”, instead: it can also be found syndicated in the right-hand column of my blog.

Update: this guy’s made a bookmarklet that makes the new Google Reader theme slightly less hideous. Doesn’t fix the other problems, though, but if you’re not quite pissed-off enough to jump ship, it might make your experience more-bearable.

Update 2: others in the blogosphere are saying good things about Reader rival NewsBlur, which recently turned one year old. If you’re looking for a hosted service, rather than something “roll-your-own” like Tiny Tiny RSS, perhaps it’s the tool for you?

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