Review: Feedly for Firefox
When Firefox 3.0 was officially launched last Tuesday, I updated my copy of Firefox and installed a few select browser add-ons. This included my normal batch of add-ons like Firebug, YSlow, Delicious Bookmarks, and a recently discovered Quartz inline PDF plugin (nifty!). Then I found out about Feedly. Feedly is described as “a more social and magazine-like start page.”
Feedly taps into RSS aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader and socially-oriented sites like Friendfeed and Twitter. The end result is a tight grasp on information overload. Loads of information from feeds you subscribe to and other services you interact with are all funneled into one nicely designed start page.
Twitter integration lets users tweet about articles, “the wall” highlights articles recommended from contacts and users can even annotate articles for their friends to see. One small feature I find particularly noteworthy is preview, which lets you load an article’s webpage within Feedly. As a publisher, I like it when people dip out of their RSS readers and visit my site “in person” for a change. I’m sure there are still several Feedly features I have yet to discover.
How do I like it? For most of the 14 years that I have had Internet access, my homepage has been some Google-owned property, whether it was their homepage or their IG portal. I say “for most of” because there was a time when Google did not exist and even I used AOL, but I digress. Feedly is now my homepage. I was never big on living in Google Reader. Feedly has made it easier to absorb the content I care about.
My only piece of feedback for Feedly is that I would like the search box at the top to have the ability to search the web, not just subscribed content. I posted this idea to Feedly’s Get Satisfaction page and it seems like it will be present in Feedly in the near future.
Thoughts?
What do you think of Feedly? Do you use it yourself? Feedly only shows its worth when you subscribe to a bunch of feeds, so here’s my Google Reader OPML if you’d like a head start.
This is the kind of stuff I love writing about. Technology that changes the way I do something. Thanks Feedly.
I am still up in the air on whether or not I like Feedly. I am using it and getting use to it but sure takes some new mind tricks.
I did not like the fact that it took over my Greader account and add some feeds and folders/tags. I will give it another week or two and see what happens.
@Admiral70
Looks great, but it doesn’t work in Safari! Grr!
Looks way better than Google Reader, but sadly I’m stuck with it because I dual boot and use different computers plus I like having my stuff accessible from any pc. I just hope Google come up with a better UI designer.
Tried it after I saw it on your Twitter, but didn’t like it much. First, it created a bunch of tags/folders in my Google Reader. It didn’t even ask for my login information. Maybe that’s a good thing? It simplified some things (easy to get started), but that kinda creeped me out.
Overall, I think it was too busy for me as a homepage. Too much content, even if it’s all relevant.
Tried it, hated it. Google reader does the job for me.
Make sure you get the colour management plug in Paul in case you havent already here are the steps. And PicLens of course in case you view imagery much.
I’ve used Feedly and it’s just like a portal page. When I heard of it, I wrote on Twitter that Feedly had the potential to make me stop using services like Socialthing and Google Reader, but that just didn’t happen.
The fact that Feedly only works wherever it is installed is a big turn off.
Yeah the local aspect is a huge drawback for most people. I’m a rare exception in that I only have/use one computer primarily.
edit: Edwin answered this question below. feedly doesnt store local info so it can be used easily on multiple machines.
I’m another that didn’t like the fact that it took over my Google Reader with new feeds and tags. I’d like to to show me new articles that could be relevent, but don’t want them to be added into Google Reader.
I also didn’t like that you can only ’share’ and receive shared stuff from other Feedly users. Or am I missing something?
I don’t mind that it’s only for Firefox, and I do kinda like the layout and the way it presents information. Kind of reminded me about when Times (the RSS Reader) was released, which acts more like a newspaper than an RSS reader that presents single articles at a time.
Might give it another go with JUST the feeds I want, instead of letting it show me new stuff I might be interested in and taking over Google Reader again. But we’ll see. I use Google Reader with Fluid and it does the job just fine for me.
@Jonathan: although feedly is a plug-in, it does not store any information locally so you should have not problem accessing feedly from multiple machines.
@Dimitry: which version did you try? We did some massive changes during the last 3 days to make sure that the notification that feedly is integrated with google reader is explicit: there is now a modal dialog box with a “OK, I grant you the right to access my Google Reader account” http://edwink.devhd.com/2008/06/21/download-available-again-10b3/ was that not clear enough? how would you change it?
@Long: you are correct that you need to have it installed each machine but it is designed to be accessed from multiple machines.
@g and others: sorry to disappoint you. The challenge is that feedly is not designed for more sophisticated RSS users: we try to compromise the productivity aspects (which google reader totally nails) for more visual appeal and fun..our goal is to see if you we can package the goodness of RSS and social sharing to a more mainstream audience. We are not there yet but it is an interesting nut to try to crack.
@remixx. regarding the taking over Google Reader, see the answer to Dimitry. I would be curious to hear which version you tried and how you would make the notification more explicit (if possible). Regardind sharing, you can share with all feedly and google reader users, we also offer twitter and delicious integration. We will be adding magnolia and any other sharing the users ask for.
@remixx. If you do not check any new sources in the welcome wizard, feedly will NOT add any sources to your google reader so if you have a good list of sources that might be a good way to get started.
feedly is still early in the development cycle. I want to thank everyone of the feedback because this kind of feedback is what we need to know what needs to be polished and what needs to be changed.
I wrote a post last week about how much I like Feedly (http://scottschnaars.com/?p=620).
I’m really into it and despite the navigation, I think that it is an excellent reader. I agree with your other posters, though, the idea of it auto-populating my Google reader list was pretty annoying.
I don’t think you’ve had Google that long, have you? Google search (alone) came online in September 1998. It’s okay to admit you were an AOL user longer than you care to remember. Or CompuServe.
@Edwin Khodabakchian - What would be nice for it to do is have access to your Google Reader account, take those feeds and show them on Feedly, but any new sources that you add in the welcome wizard should show up through Feedly alone, or you could have the option to add them to Google Reader. It wasn’t really clear that they would be added to Google Reader automatically. Choice is always good :)
Sure, I could have just not checked the option to discover new sources, but discovering new stuff is always good, and it is one of the best features inside Feedly, in my opinion. I’d just like it to be up to ME to decide what gets put into my Google Reader, ’cause not all the newly discovered feeds are going to be stuff I’m interested in, obviously.
Not sure what version I tried, as I’ve since uninstalled it. But I might give it a go again. Thanks for listening and taking our feedback, as well as giving your own :)
I’m a huge fan of Feedly and it has replaced Netvibes as my start page on all my machines, home and work. I’ve also found a number of new sites via Feedly that I’m now subscribed to.
Feedly is my homepage for the last 5 days. I was using Greader for the last couple of years, so it wasn’t easy to get used to this new layout. After the first day I understood that it has so much to offer and it saved me tons of clicks. One great advantage is that the guys at Feedly scan every comment on the web on a 24/7 basis, and they listen to the community. The make great improvements every day. I love that now you have the ability to add a blog post to delicious with just one click.
Of course, it’s not a perfect product yet, but it’s a fine idea with great potential.
@reemixx we will look into the option of partially adding feeds but implementing partial sync is probably harder than us just implementing our own feed processing back end. If there is demand, we will definitely consider that option.
@angel, george thank you..we will try to make sure we continue to evolve fast enough so that we do not disappoint you.
Feedly is simply amazing! I’ve only been using it for a little while since you reviewed it and I love how it integrates with a lot of my social networks. The Google Reader integration is my favorite!
After seeing reviews in various places, I installed this a few hours ago and like it much better than FeedDemon and Google Reader combined. Granted, I only use one computer so I’m in the minority with Paul.
I noticed some oddities, though, if anyone has any tips:
Before installing Feedly, I had placed some feeds into different folders. I see the folders are migrated but it doesn’t look like all my feeds are in the respective folders. Moreover, when I click the tab for the folder, I only see one feed listed when there should be several more. I can’t figure out how to change folder settings.
Ari,
Can you please log a bug here: http://www.getsatisfaction.com/feedly and we will try to track it down and help you resolve it.
What would be useful would be to submit with the problem a sanitized copy of the content of http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/unread-count?all=true&client=feedly&autorefresh=true&output=json&ck=1212121
Thank you,
Edwin
Had a quick play with this, doesn’t seem to be integrating with Twitter correctly, but that might be a Twitter problem. It does all seem a little busy at the moment, but I didn’t have Google Reader set up first, so it might all just need some serious pruning. I’ll have a proper look at it in the morning. Cheers for the heads up Paul !
Oli: you are right: the inbound integration with twitter (seeing tweets on the wall, etc.) is not polished yet. We are re-iterating on that aspect. The outbount integration (ie being able to spread an article you like on twitter) is more polished.
@ Edwin - Thanks for the reply Edwin, always good to see a developer on the ball !
I am very used to Google Reader (which I like a lot) but I am starting to get the hang of Feedly. Plus, I think it is visually fantastic!
I commend Edwin for taking the time to answer questions and comment on everybody’s comments. Great job!
Looks pretty nice, I’m def going to take a look and give it a try. Nice review Paul.
That’s a lot of RSS feeds in your OPML. Do you read each and every post, or let them sit unread and just pick and choose, or do you ‘Mark All As Read’ periodically?