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“Freedbacking Bloglines” — that’s the slightly mangled phrase that users of Bloglines are invited to use to provide feedback on the Bloglines service to the Ask Bloglines team through their blogs. Hopefully, I just joined the ranks of Bloglines freedbackers.

Julian has already been freeding backing his commentsing. That post has made me think critically about Bloglines for the first time since Google Reader was introduced.

Why I use Bloglines

I was introduced to Bloglines by Alastair of Girtby.net as a practical way of reading blogs. The features that originally sold me on Bloglines were:

1. Web-centralized blog reading
2. Email subscriptions

These days it’s all #1, and none of #2.

Using Bloglines

I only use the Bloglines blog reading and feed subscription interfaces.

I have “clipped” things before, but that has been a write-only interface for me — I haven’t gone back to retrieve the clipped items.

I have a lot of subscriptions. Most of my subscriptions are rarely read. I arrange my subscriptions into folders with contradictory categorization strategies.

For a start I have a main “blogroll” folder, which is where most of my frequently accessed feed subscriptions reside.

I have a “politics and news” folder, a “software” folder, and some other finer subject areas. I also have a folder for “mid-traffic” which is a kind of infrequently read, esoteric blog bin. When I get annoyed at a blog, blogger, or just begin to wonder why I subscribe to something - I move the subscription to the “rarely used” folder. From here I occasionally delete subscriptions when I get the time and the motivation.

To overcome an edit view problems I have a “moveme” folder. This is a way of getting around what I think is a UI shortfall in the edit function. I have long lists of blogs in some folders, and dragging subscriptions into other folders is tricky - as holding a subscription on your mouse and finding the sweet spot on the browser window where the text will start to scroll is a bit of a test of agility and patience. I just close all of the folders, and put the “moveme” folder above or below the folder I’m cleaning up, and then open it so that I can drag right into the “moveme” folder without having to scroll. When done’ I move the “moveme” folder next to the various folders where I need to move subscriptions and make the changes from there.

The left frame “collapse” bar/button caught me out a couple of times until I registered what it was. I understand the need for such functionality, but accidentally clicking a non-obvious and unconventional user interface component must frustrate more than just me. How about a button in the right side to hide/show the left frame?

A surface-level comparison with Google Reader

I have tried Google Reader briefly and that’s all I can really compare with. Google reader doesn’t optimise its use of screen space as well as Bloglines. Google reader is a slick looking interface with smooth scrolling, nice call-outs and a the trademark Google preference for labeling over hierarchies. Bloglines is still a “tree plus content” sold-school frames web application, but it’s arranged well for presenting large volumes of information in a readable way.

Google Reader seems to emphasise three modes of reading:

1. All new posts
2. Individual blogs
3. New posts by label

The Google Reader user interface wastes more potentially useful screen real estate than the bloglines, and it is more responsive. I would guess that this makes it more approachable for new users with fewer blogs, but more intimidating for users who bring a large volume of source blogs looking for a new reader.

Thinking about the method I use to organize my subscriptions was a kind of a revelation for me about the organizing emphasis of Bloglines and Google Reader described in the comparison below.

If you look above at my sample Bloglines folders, a tag/label system is probably a better fit to my categorization methods than Bloglines’ faux folder hierarchy. The folder system forces the user to make a single categorization decision about a feed. A personal tagging or labeling system allows me to organize based on multiple different, even contradictory, categorizations. I can tag for importance, theme, writing style or other systems without having to duplicate the feed itself.

Trying to reproduce this with Bloglines’ folders is difficult as Bloglines will stop you from subscribing to the same feed twice in different parts of your subscription list. A tag-based approach would make a tree plus document view hard to maintain.

Things I’d like to see

• Update diffs and post history. I guess that maintaining state for each new post is potentially unfeasible, but this would be useful for more than voyeuristic purposes.
• When searching or subscribing or reading, I’d like to see a traffic history for each feed. Something like the number of posts in the last day, week, month, quarter, year would help me know if I’m subscribing to a defunct feed, or a fresh one.
• Defunct feed notification. Some method of putting a change of address sign up in Bloglines for old feeds would be very useful. A difficult problem, but a lot of sites I’ve seen move spend some time setting up, migrating, and generally changing their feeds.
• Sort by past reading frequency. A better metric to sort on might be average time between post and read, rather than frequency. I’d rather a machine tell me my reading preferences than fathom my own.

Do I like Bloglines?

What I like about Bloglines is that it’s very good for showing a lot of information at once and it behaves in a predictable way. Bloglines is reliable, available and free. It’s like my current run-around car. It’s 18 years old and has a couple of niggling problems. I can’t complain about it because it’s the most reliable car I have ever owned — but I wish it was newer-looking.