NewsGator Online rolls out minor changes
Updated: The forum post that Brian kindly pointed to in the comments explains that the Google ads are only displayed when the new ‘Summary’ view is in use; I’ve switched it back to ‘Full Posts’ so I won’t be bothered by them again. I think the changes should have warranted an item in the NewsGator RSS feed, though, for those of us who don’t read their support forums.
The online feedreader, NewsGator Online, appears to have made some subtle but annoying changes to its interface overnight.
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Previously, items in a site’s feed were shown how the author specified – either the full text of the entry, or a truncated excerpt plus some sort of invitation to ‘click through’ – but now, each individual item is reduced to a couple of unformatted sentences, accompanied by a small plus icon that, when clicked, expands the entry to its full size.
The upshot is that for someone like me, who prefers to read entries in the ‘reader rather than visiting the site, I now have to click every single entry to read my feeds. Scroll, click, scroll, click, scroll, click. Pointless and annoying, and I can’t find any indication in the settings that it can be turned off.
Adwords
Secondly, the first three sites in my aggregated feeds sported enormous Adwords skyscrapers in their margins. I can’t imagine it was pure coincidence that those three authors had all added ads to their feeds, so I’ve got to conclude it is another NewsGator ‘enhancement’.
Unfortunately, when combined with the new compact article display, the Adwords block makes the individual site feed area expand to be far taller than it needs to be, introducing acres of whitespace. Not nice, and it does nothing to enhance NewsGator’s previously clean and appealing interface.
Two thumbs down
The two changes released do nothing to help me as a user, and in fact make the experience of using the site significantly worse. I only switched to using NewsGator relatively recently – I don’t really want to go through that process again, but I can’t help but be disappointed by their ‘improvements’. Sure, they have to make money somehow, and monetizing feeds by introducing context-sensitive ads is one way… but does it really need to be so fugly?
Click the screenshot to view the full-size version on Flickr, complete with notes.
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Comments
- Matthew Pennell
- 931 days ago
Excellent, thanks for that Brian. :)
I am wondering though why you chose to put the Google ads inside the actual feeds (making it appear as if they are part of the site’s content, rather deceptively IMO) – there’s plenty of space under the ‘Latest Buzz’ section for those ads if they must be present.
- #2
You can go back to the original view by selecting “Full Posts” in the Display Options menu at the top of the page. There are more details in the NewsGator forums here:
http://www.newsgator.com/forum/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=22&messageid=23616