I’ve got a blog post queued up, ready to go, talking about the results of my feed categorization. But as I’ve started to plunk a few feeds and widgets onto my dashboard, I’m realizing something that might just be a show stopper, or at least will require a major shift in the way I view things.
Having my screen filled with things I’ve already read seems like a big waste of space. Sure, the built-in Netvibes RSS module lets me configure how many items to show, and you can “mark as read” so that they’re not bold, but I still have a screen full of widgets with grayed-out headlines that are no longer relevant. This is annoying on the big screen, but when I’m mobile this is a huge usability issue… I have to sit on scroll though tons of old data to pick out the new stuff. Tonight was the first time I seriously tried to use the Netvibes mobile interface, and having to scroll though screen after screen of already-read data was a huge time-wasting pain in the ass.
Is there a better RSS module? I found a Greasemonkey script that claims it’ll do what I’m asking on the full screen version. I haven’t tried it out, but my biggest usability beef is with the mobile interface. Unless there’s a module which can hide read items from the server side, this may be the end of my Netvibes adventure…
[tags]netvibes, rss, mobile, dashboards, information[/tags]
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Man, Aaron. That’s a really great point. If only someone, *cough* David Frey *ahem*, could program a better feed reading module…
The beer and blog discussion we had started a few hamsters in my head, and now this post has hung a carrot in front of them.
Do hamsters really like carrots?
Justin, I’ve heard you already. Aaron, I’ll try to find some time this coming weekend to give this whole actionable UWA module idea a try. Is the ability to hide read items the most important flaw in your opinion?
Yes, in my mind the hiding of read items is my biggest roadblock at this point. The ability to quickly “mark all as read” is also important, but is already present in the Netvibes feed module.