On: New in Reader: a fresh design, and Google+ sharing

[po]

My problem with the new Reader is the lack of visual indication of read vs unread items.

Yeah, I had a few people complaining in my twitter timeline and I thought, "Everyone always bitches when something new gets rolled out. It can't be that bad, come on." I logged in and I wasn't impressed but it was he lack of read vs. unread that pushed me over the edge.

Here's the main kicker of that: What's the point of marking the unread count on the left hand sidebar if there's no way to see which ones in the main view? This is what makes me think it's half-baked. They half-removed a feature.

[anigbrowl → po]

Unread is black on white. Read is black on grey.

[barrkel → anigbrowl]

What? Where in the item is this grey background for Read state? When I toggle the "Keep unread" checkbox, there is no discernible change in the item.

[barrkel → barrkel]

If someone would just point out where this grey background is, rather than downvoting me, that would actually be helpful.

[anigbrowl → barrkel]

On the headline for each feed posting. For example:

  Blogs.    Posts.
  -------+---------
  blog1  | Unread post    (b on w)
  blog2=>| Old post.      (b on g)

Here you're reading blog2, there are two posts, one unread.

[barrkel → anigbrowl]

That's not what I see, Edward.

Upon close examination, the headline text (not background) for unread is black on white, while the headline for read is very dark grey text on white. The headline for the item being currently read is also black on white.

The contrast is almost unnoticeable (I didn't notice it before), in particular because it's text on a bright background. I'd have to adjust my monitor gamma to make the distinction obvious, at the cost of color reproduction elsewhere. There is more variance in the shades of grey of text on my monitor from viewing angles than there is from this read / unread distinction.

The text varies between #000000 (black) and #222222 (87% black). Good luck distinguishing 87% black text on a white background from 100% black.

[anigbrowl → barrkel]

Maybe they're doing a/b testing in different markets? Here's a screenshot of my reader page, the top item in the feed (timestamp 12:23pm) is unread and should look b/w, while all the items below are b/g.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/RWN8fsl7HjX5SFul8mb7OJ...

[po → anigbrowl]

Ah Ha! Here's the confusion: You're in list view and I think those of us who are unhappy are using the 'expanded view'. Under the expanded view, you used to be able to see the difference between posts and now you cannot. I had been using expanded view for so long I had forgotten that list view even existed.

So, yeah. The 'read state' of Google Reader is half-baked in expanded view.