I've used and enjoyed bloglines for a long time now. I discovered it and started using it when I was on linux, started reading feeds, and couldn't find a fat client RSS reader that was very good. Combine that with the benefit of having access to my feeds everywhere and it was a slam dunk. When I switched to Mac, I just kept using bloglines, even though I knew there were some decent feed readers for OS X.
I had always assumed I'd stop using them one day because since I can't figure out how on earth they make money, they'd go out of business eventually (or get peppered with flashing ads). Turns out that it's an Ajax-y update to the left tree on their site that's going to drive me away.
Now it updates the tree in-place instead of reloading the whole left frame. In Safari at least, whatever code is driving that locks up safari for the duration of the update. The dreaded "spinning beachball" pops up and everything is totally unresponsive until they are done. Then it decides to give my cursor back, but I've still got a few seconds until I can do anything.
So now I can't leave it open, which is sort of inconvenient for...you know...reading it. Plus the hover underline is gone from the left tree too. Combined with the lockups, and a new-found ajaxy lag in updating the DOM when you click on a blog in the left side, it feels terribly unresponsive.
I'm sure it probably works fine in Firefox and it's really just triggering some Safari or WebKit defect, but since I don't use Firefox for my day to day browsing to that's little consolation.
If there's not a rollback (or an option for the old interface), I'll have to find myself a new RSS reader. Too bad, I like bloglines, they've always been very responsive to suggestions, so here's to hoping this has some impact. It may just be that Safari's market share is too small to worry about for them, which is fine, I'm not mad, just sad.
What's a good client-side RSS reader? Any suggestions?
Update: Bloglines contacted me (see the comments) almost right as well; they continue to be extraordinarily responsive. No resolution yet, but I did notice that underlines are back, and that the problem is much less pronounced when my number of unread feeds that show up is small. Not sure where the tipping point is, but I'll wait and see if it gets better. In the meantime I'll just have to remember to close my my feeds window when I'm done reading.
10/23 Update: So I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but it seemed like the pause got a little less annoying on it's own. Since Safari seemed to have slowed a bit anyway, following some interweb advice I cleared my cache and removed all the auto-form-fill cache entries. Now things are much faster, and I think I'm back to usable.
Hi Rob,
I'm a UI engineer at Bloglines. First, just wanted to say thanks for taking the time write up your feedback. We really appreciate it.
I'm sad to hear your having problems. Feel free to contact me at the email address supplied, and I'd be happy to try and determine what the problem is.
Thanks,
Ben Lowery
Bloglines Engineer
I agree with your post on Bloglines freedbacking. This new "refresh tree" thing I keep having to look at in the left pane is going to drive me away as well. The system was perfectly fine (and fast) the way it was. Now they had to be all cool and ajaxy. All it does is slow things down significantly, it frequently 'hangs' for several seconds, it won't keep empty folders closed even though that's how my settings are, etc., etc. I could go on and on. This new "feature" adds absolutely nothing and yet makes me do more work. Like typing 'r' was a big deal? And the user got to control when that happened. Like you, I've asked them to either rollback or give me a way to opt-out of this non-feature, otherwise I will opt out of Bloglines. And that's a shame; been with them since the start. But this last thing is just stupid. Makes me wonder if they even use their own service.
Hi Rob,
Thanks to your and others feedback, we found a few places in the update where we could significantly speed things up. We released those updates about a week after my first response that made the tree update significantly faster, so it's not just magic that things seem faster again.
Thanks again for the feedback.
--ben
This is Rob Meyer's weblog, a weblog focused on software development and system administration based on 10 years of experience. Want to explore further? You can find out more me or see the rest of my website.
Wondering if I've written on something in particular? Try searching:
You might want to take a look at some of the more requested postings (as judged by incoming traffic):
Want more? Subscribe to this site 
or contact me at rob at big dis dot com.
See my writings on: