Uploaded a new version of the Better GReader Firefox extension late last week, with a long overdue bug fix on one of its most useful features: inline article preview.
While you’re using Google Reader to peruse your feeds, with Inline Preview (click) enabled, you can click the article headline to load it within the Google Reader frame, no new tab required. This is especially useful for news articles that don’t include the full text inside their feed items. Thanks to scripter Bryan Tsai, this new version also lets you Ctrl+Click a headline if you do want to open it in a new tab. See it and a few other Better GReader features in action in the video below. Or just download Better GReader here, or ask questions on the mailing list here.
This video clip demonstrates the inline preview feature, but I’ve got three other options enabled that might make my Google Reader look different than yours: Show Feed Favicons, Colorful List View and the Minimalistic skin.
Thanks to all the developers whose user scripts make Better GReader possible. Here’s the full list.
- Absolutely Compact
Maximizes the area for displaying articles.
By DJBullwinkle - Air Skin
Cleaner font.
By hebbet - Auto Add to Reader (Bypass iGoogle Choice)
Bypasses choice between iGoogle and Reader when subscribing to feeds.
By Simon Lieschke - Colorful List View
Colorizes the item headers in Google Reader list view. (Doesn’t work with Google Gears enabled.)
By kepp - Hide Unread Item Count
Removes all unread numbers from Google Reader (except the window title count).
By rcphq - Mark Until Current As Read (Shift+Y)
Mark all entries up to the current entry as read (Shift+Y), marks all items below the current item as read (Shift+I).
By Gautham Pai - Minimalistic
Tap W key to toggle the top bar.
By Scott Cowan - Optimized
Maximize viewing area, cleaner font.
By paikia - Preview Item (Automatically)
Replaces Google Reader’s article summary with a frame containing the actual blog’s web page.
By Itai Lahan - Preview Item (Click button)
Adds a “Preview button” that allows you to view actual article in a frame. Clicking again on that button goes back to RSS view. Does work both in List view and expanded view.
By Julien CAROSI and bryantsai - Show Feed Favicons (Firefox 3.1+ only)
Displays site favicons for each feed inside Reader. (Not compatible with OS X skin.)
By henrah - Smart Subscribe
Two-click subscription to feeds encountered on any web page.
By Jasper de Vries and Mihai Parparita
Better GReader 0.6.2 [Mozilla Add-ons]
6 Comments
Mike Cerm
I’m a little confused. I’ve been using this feature forever, and it’s always worked just fine. Was this just a bump of the “Max Version” to be compatible with 3.5? (I leave max version checking disabled, because I usually run nightly releases or betas, so I wouldn’t have noticed.)
Also, who needs a script to open links in a new tab? Middle-clicking works just fine on Windows, and can’t Mac users just use Command+Click?
Andrew Rye
Gina,
Can you shed some light on why the RSS feed for http://dlisted.com/rss.xml doesn’t work in Preview? It’s not just an issue with this release as I’ve never been able to get it to work. It will display the page for a brief second before blanking to white. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
Gina Trapani
@Mike: I should have clarified. Click to Preview was broken for readers who use expanded view. Here’s the mailing list discussion thread. Also, I believe middle-click/Ctrl+Click just previewed before, overriding the default browser behavior before. That isn’t the case now.
@Andrew: Unfort the preview doesn’t work with some sites. I know for instance that NYTimes.com doesn’t allow its pages to display in iframes at all, so if you try to preview it it takes over the whole page. (There must be Javascript on their side which does this.) Probably the case with that feed as well.
Indy
@Gina
Let me start with saying that I am a big fan of Lifehacker and your recently started blog, Smarterware. Better GReader Firefox extension has some very neat features. However, do you happen to know if there is a script or extension that lets me add ‘search keywords’ to a feed? For example, the feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlickdealsnetFP
includes a wide variety of deals from SlickDeals community. However, I will be overwhelmed with posts if I blindly subscribe to it. So, I use feedsifter.com to parse through the posts using keywords such as Xbox, GPS. The drawback to this is that, changing the keywords isn’t as easy as it should be. I would have to start all over again from feedsifter.com, paste in the original feed, type in the keywords and then subscribe to the newly generated feed. This all sounds so cumbersome and archaic. I wish there was a simpler way.
kosmonautbruce
Yes! Thanks to you (and Bryan!) for getting this feature back in Better GReader. It’s been driving me crazy since it went away, as I didn’t know about the mailing list thread.
Great update to a great project.
Mike Cerm
@Indy
It sounds like what you should be using is Yahoo Pipes. It’s much more customizable than Feed Sifter, it can definitely do what you need, and it’s also got one of the coolest GUIs you’ll see in a browser.
pipes.yahoo.com
What it will allow you to do is create a “pipe”, which is Yahoo’s name for a customized feed. In Google Reader, you stay subscribed to the RSS of that pipe, but you can go and edit your pipe’s parameters at any time.
You can do a lot of other things with Yahoo Pipes as well, like combine multiple feeds into one. For example, you could create pipe that pulls from SlickDeals, StealDeals, and Dealspl.us, and then filter that to show you just the items you’re in the market for.
Definitely check it out. Pipes has got to be the best service that’s come out of Yahoo in a decade, and it’s really in a class of it’s own. If you’re a really non-technical person, it may take some time to get your head around it. However, if you’re reading this blog, you’re certainly smart enough to get it to do what you’re looking to do.