Dave Viner's Weblog

complaints about bloglines

Recently, I've been using BlogLines to read my blogs. I decided it was time for me to try one of the web-based RSS readers, since I switch computers fairly frequently nowadays. After a month or so of use, I have 2 major complaints.

First, the HTML frames look is utterly ancient. I'm no GUI expert, but I'm fairly confident that frames went out of style like 5 years ago. The look just makes the site feel klunky and old to me. I can't help it. It's just my personal reaction to HTML frames.

Second, and more importantly, the interaction can be extraordinarily frustrating. The site "remembers" what RSS entries it's already shown me - which is quite useful. In fact, one of the main reasons I wanted to try BlogLines was this particular feature. I find it hard to keep track in Firefox's Live Bookmarks of what I've read and what I haven't in the blogs that I tend to read. However, BlogLines and my connection to BlogLines frequently hangs. Because I am pretty impatient when it comes to browsing, I hit reload a lot. Well, guess what happens when I hit reload. Yup, *all* those entries are now deemed by BlogLines to have been "seen" by me. So reloading the page effectively erases all the entries and I can't figure out how to get them back.

That's just plain silly and *hugely* frustrating. I am ready to try something else because I've been bitten by this feature dozens of times and I can't take it anymore.

Got any suggestions for a good RSS reader? Either web-based or client based (if client based, it *must* be Mac-enabled.