Mobile Google Reader FINALLY Gets It Right

One of the hardships in moving from the Treo to the iPhone was adjusting to the vastly inferior way the browser handled Google Reader Mobile on the iPhone. With the Treo's Blazer browser, pages were easily reformatted for the small screen, and you had the option to turn images off; this made for a fast, well-formatted reading experience of perusing your favorite RSS feeds through Google Reader. On the iPhone, however, images make the page width go haywire, and the confusing controls made reading from page to page nearly impossible. Frustration reigned, and I tried Bloglines and even considered Jailbreaking my iPhone to install an RSS reader.

Last week, while absentmindedly trying the mobile Reader again, I noticed some major changes. First, the images were being served up on the same scale as the page width, with an option to click on them to zoom. Second, there were now helpful "Next page" links on the bottom of article list views, allowing you to go to the top of the next page of articles without having to flick your way to the top. Finally, it was much faster: articles loaded almost at the same speed on EDGE as they did on WiFi. All with very little fanfare, but this article did catch it.

Kudos, Google. You've brought a happy Reader back.

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