Instead of calling it a donation, just call it the 'pro' version and add like a supporter badge on the header or let them do something silly like change the color of their header like on HN. Will probably get more funds that way and won't get cynical people to roll their eyes at questionable use of the word 'donation' whether it is or not.
Yeah, but we're all geeks here. It can't be that hard to splice together some custom CSS to make hacker news look like whatever you want. Let me just click view source and OH GOD PG FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY WHY ARE YOU USING NESTED TABLES IT'S 2013!!?!?!!111questionmark!
Actually this has been asked here before and pg himself did answer the question [1] (you may have to scroll a little to see pg's response). pg also argues in one of his essays [2] that tables are the (lisp) lists of html, being very dynamic and flexible which is perfect for explanatory programming despite being unclear (in its purpose/structure) sometimes.
It's difficult to scale an RSS reader as you could quickly start having to crawl orders of magnitude number of feeds more than you are now as you get more users, if power users like your thing. I know because I worked at Bloglines. You're either going to need money or you will shut it down eventually.
That's the point - the "pro" version only gives you a silly, feel-good feature, but it (might) increase revenue when people feel they're actually getting something.
"I wanted to offer the service to people that might not be able to afford it, and not have them punished by having fewer features."
That's neat, why don't consider some kind of sponsorship program? A user that can pay, can sponsor one or two more users who can't, that would be nice :)
Alternatively, keep calling it a donation and let people donate whatever they want, with $9 as the minimum. A good RSS reader is worth a lot more than $9 a year to some people.
I agree with this. PLEASE make a paid version, otherwise your project will end in the same place where all those other free RSS readers ended: in archive.org
The problem with these kind of services is that if they are free, a lot of people won't pay for them and might use so many resources that the money paid by the few people who donated or paid will not be enough to sustain the service.
Sorry for the tone, but I am so tired of seeing lots of mini-web services turned off because they were free... Nowadays I downloaded Vizzy for Mac: although it is not the most pretty RSS reader, I know it will be working forever.
Why does everything have to be described as "beautiful"? Yes, it looks nice. It's not fucking Beethoven, it's a website that appears to do a damn fine job of managing RSS feeds. Yet every damn day we see another HN front-page article about such-and-such a "beautiful" web-app.
Edit: also, in this instance, a good chunk of the beautiful design seems to have been lifted from Google's style, from the icon style to the way they put a little red bar next to the current selection
It's a good way to say, "Hey, not only did I develop this cool thing, I designed this cool thing."
Also, sometimes design is a focal point. All things being equal, I will choose the prettier option. I might even be persuaded to pay money for a prettier option if it functions just as well as the ugly open source option.
While i agree that beautiful does come in no small part from the "mechanics of how things work" there's NO WAY TO KNOW that you've done that from the site. It's a static screenshot. To be honest the screenshot's a bit... simple and plain. Not terribly notable. Maybe it is a "beautiful" experience to use it, but I've got no way of knowing that without signing up for it. What's my incentive here? Why should I bother with yours when all i see is a simple screenshot with NO indication of ANY notable functionality or mechanics?
These "beautiful" labels are also a little hard to take since they always seem to come from the creator of the darned thing, a source that's a bit biased.
It looks nice, and at this point in time, this is what I'll probably be using next month.
A few things:
* Is there a way to scroll through all items in the same way that Google Reader does, rather than having to go to the next item by clicking (or hitting "j")? Feeds with lots of images suffer from the current approach, since there's a delay when each item is loaded (preloading them, say, five items in advance works well).
* Hitting keyboard controls like "j" when Firefox's "search when you start typing" is turned on doesn't work. I think you need to return false in the keypress event handler (or whichever one it is).
* I would suggest changing the body font to black with a weight of 400. I have Source Sans Pro installed, and at 300 #606060 it's too light (in both senses of the word). It looks nice enough, but the main purpose of this is for reading, so using the most legible font possible should be a priority. (Tip: 15px Arial looks a lot nicer than 16px, IMHO. It's what I was using when I made 90% of a feed reader.)
* Yep, just hold "n" or "space" and you'll scroll through the articles
* I'll look into that.
* I'll try to gather some more feedback to what people think about the font. Perhaps it would make sense for this to be configurable.
Hats off for the notification that popped up as I was trying to import telling me that HN traffic bogged you down. That was very classily and well done.
For me, it wasn't just that it popped up a notification, it's that hitting the arrow on the popup gives you a reply-to window with the text of the notification already filled in. Really made me feel welcome.
It looks like she's using http://intercom.io for the notifications. We use them at http://circleci.com and they've been hugely valuable for getting feedback.
I added my first subscription just fine, but subsequent attempts have given me error messages.
1) URLs that should work with autodiscovery give me this message -> "Sorry, that does not look like a valid URL".
2) When I enter the full URL of the feed it appears to add the subscription successfully, but it doesn't show up when I refresh my screen.
3) The keyboard navigation is a bit weird. If "J" advances to the next item, should the previous letter "H" send me to the previous item (as opposed to "K")?
4) I don't see how I can manually create folders for my subscriptions.
5) I can't rename subscription titles.
Yoleo looks promising, but it feels like a beta product.
3) The keyboard navigation is a bit weird. If "J" advances to the next item, should the previous letter "H" send me to the previous item (as opposed to "K")?
Very cool. I sign in/up using my Google account, and the import is chugging along.
One of the things a liked about Reader was that I could get a very simple, compact, list of feed headlines, making it easy to scan through a large number of items to pick out the few that might be of interest. A good RSS read helps me get through a lot of data without having to step through every item or go through pages with only a handful of items showing on each.
I did not see a way to get such a layout in Yoleo. Are simple, compact title list views possible, or planned?
I created a new account and didn't use the option to sign in with my Google account. The importer didn't ask me to sign in with my Google account, but is happily waiting for feeds to import from Google Reader. Surely it isn't able to do that without me authorizing it first?
Also, are there any plans for mobile apps? If yes, please tell me that you're going to charge for them.
- I'm sure the text look beautiful on Macs, but it's not easy to read my feeds with that grey-ish text on Windows. Can't you make the text a bit bolder or darker?
- It's obvious you spend a lot of time working on this so I'd hate to see it closing because you couldn't afford to pay for your servers. I don't think asking for a donation is a good idea. Make it something like a $1-2/monthly subscription with a full month free trial. That way you may lose some customers, but your servers wouldn't be as busy as it appears to be now and you'd have a -sorta- fixed income and wouldn't worry about the future.
- An instapaper support would be great.
- I agree with other people here. That red looks beautiful but it's distracting when you're reading. Maybe tone it down a bit, or let us choose the color/background etc? Tha'd be a killer feature.
Clever name! I pressed "import" and it claims to be importing my feeds from Google Reader, even though I never gave it a password or feed or connected through Google. I wonder how that works...
Hey Jamie - it'd be great if adding a subscription was a little more intelligent re: RSS url discovery. For example, I initially entered `daringfireball.net` and got a URL misformatted error. I subsequently tried prepending http:// - when really I needed to include a fully qualified path to the feed in the first place.
Otherwise, happy to import from Reader and check this out. I like that it feels light and easy to use.
You should be able to enter a bare url. I looked into it and daringfireball.net doesn't provide a rel="alternate" for their rss feed so my little feed discovery ditty won't work for them.
It would be nice the possibility to import also from other sources other than Google. At this point many people stopped updating their feed on Google Reader.
Yeah, I moved to self-hosted Tiny Tiny RSS after Bloglines went down. OPML import would be great. On the flip side, OPML export is also a requirement for me - I don't want to re-enter all of my feeds.
Jamie, I am getting about 10 errors a second in my console:
Uncaught TypeError: Object sufio._xdWatchInFlight(); has no method 'apply' reader-29b4dd587f1ca6b5f0d639aac64ce9bf.js:1 e.(anonymous function) reader-29b4dd587f1ca6b5f0d639aac64ce9bf.js:1
Pretty print the error location from chrome:
e.setInterval = function() {
var e = t.call(arguments, 0), n = e[0];
return e[0] = function() {
try {
n.apply(this, arguments)
Uncaught TypeError: Object sufio._xdWatchInFlight(); has no method 'apply' (repeated 1589 times)
} catch (e) {
throw TraceKit.report(e), e
}
}, r.apply(this, e)
}
The proxy at my work doesn't allow web sockets, and I think this might be related.
Also, I noticed that there are at least 3 different third party services being called (superfish, pusherapp and intercom). All of these are ancillary to the main functionality, right?
I haven't even got my feeds imported yet, and the app is already pulling down 2 MB. superfish in particular is super heavy. I think I would prefer a lighter payload.
LOL, if only you weren't the minority! If you would like to donate more, just let me know and I can manually adjust your account. Perhaps I should make the donation amount variable starting at $9/yr.
I mean, if Google thought running a free RSS reader was too expensive, imagine the headache it can cause you if/when this gets really popular.
Seriously, I admire your willingness to give something great away for free, but I also think you need to think about recouping your expenses and making your service financially sustainable for the long haul.
If we're picking this battle up, can everyone also argue a bit about the backend? I've been with Django for years, but I'm tempted to get back into Rails with how well it seems some of the JS frameworks are supported.
This looks pretty fantastic. I've been searching for a good browser option outside of Feedly, which just doesn't do it for me. I agree that more information about the product and the people behind it would be nice, however, I'm still eagerly signing up when I get a chance today. :)
Most important question: How often do you check for new content? A RSS feed reader is useless to me if you will only check my feeds once a day for new content. Bare minimum reall needs to be once every 30 minutes for me to consider it.
Consider using Mozilla Persona to handle authentication. It's easier to implement that rolling your own username/password solution (although I see you've already done that), and it's decentralised unlike using Google credentials.
I signed up and like it - after Google Reader died (and, to be honest, a while before that) I haven't used RSS much and just had a saved set of tabs that I religiously opened to waste away my time. This might .. help. Thanks!
Unrelated: I'd really be interested in a follow-up story/post from you about the load you're experiencing. You just pushed a free [1] service in front of HN. How's the thing holding up? Both code/stack and allocated hardware? I guess it boils down to general curiosity on the one hand, the question of whether you can do this in a sustainable fashion on the other hand.
I like the look of it. However, before I give you access to my data some more information on how it works, who you are, why I should use it, etc. would be nice.
That said, I hope you this gets traction. We need more options.
Hey there, good questions! I'm a developer in Toronto, Canada and I love to ride bikes and write code. I work at a place called Unspace (http://unspace.ca/team), I'm the third one down (Jamie Gilgen).
Yoleo is a self funded project. I would like to keep it that way if I can. That's why donations are very welcome. I do however offer Yoleo up for free for those who are unable to pay. Yoleo is written in Ember, and is backed by Rails.
I'm really into Ember, and helped out out by teaching a portion of the most recent Embergarten (http://unspace.ca/embergarten/) here in Toronto.
The import is a simple one click import, I've directly integrated with Googles Reader API.
This is true. Also, you should be redirected to https when you go to /account if things are working how they're intended. I don't run the full thing through SSL quite yet, because I pull in content from lots of different sources (images, for example), and that would cause SSL warnings.
I have something in mind for this, but haven't gotten around to implementing it yet. Full SSL is coming.
Looks very nice, but there's no mention of what to me is the #1 requirement for a Reader replacement: the ability to export your data. Ideally, the ability to export your data in the same format that Reader does, given that all the apps pitching to replace Reader can import that.
This isn't specific to Yoleo; nobody seems to be implementing this, and it doesn't show up on the comparison summaries that pop up here on HN from time to time. There's no way all the current contenders are going to last; why isn't everyone jittery?
Looks beautiful, interesting pay model. Seems like enough people still use RSS readers...
Just 2 feature requests:
1.) Let us change the one color :) That red is pretty, but distracts from the content. Dustin Curtis got this right on his minimalist design in that the one-color isn't used in the actual content.
2.) Responsive design: Iv'e been removing apps from my phone for weeks and I couldn't be happier. Far less annoying update badges. Also, as something that is open all the time it would be great to keep it in a smaller window than the current design allows.
I would probably start with removing the red from the titles first. Removing the red completely would take away from the overall design which is too nice to mess up.
I always think a straight forward headline/copy relationship should be achievable with spacing, and maybe font-size before adding bold or a color.
If it's still too much (remember, this is an every day kind of app!) maybe the active links on the right could go non-red, then if it's still too much the border-left on the active links on the right.
Again, grats on shipping something that looks good.
Looks like an awesome service... I need a replacement for Google Reader so I'll try this one out. Also, please consider accepting bitcoin so I can pay without revealing my private credit card information.
Update: I am trying it out right now and I've noticed it's taking quite a long time to load my Google Reader profile. My Reader profile is absolutely enormous - hundreds of blogs and thousands upon thousands of read and unread posts. It took about 10 minutes to load a single blog. This is going to take a while.
Why so many proprietary, web-based RSS readers? There are plenty of free readers so it's silly to get locked-in to yet another web-based RSS reader that will shut down some day.
I need an RSS reader that works and syncs across my Linux laptop, Windows 8 desktop, Android phone and Windows XP work computer (and I can't install any software on the work computer).
This is yet another RSS reader that doesn't understand how power users use RSS readers.
The information density is WAY too low.
It would take me forever to browse through my feeds using your interface.
The reason why I like (and still use) Google Reader is because it packs the most number of posts of any RSS reader on a single page and makes it easy to scroll for more.
Google Reader is "glancable". Yoleo is not.
Otherwise Yoleo looks pretty ok. Design is clear and the icons look good, and it's simple to use.
However, the "glancability" issue completely kills it for me.
I did not sign in with Google, but the import page still says "Importing…" without any action on my part. Will there be an option to manually upload a list of feeds?
I have the same problem as well. I didn't really want to create the account from my Google Account but would still like to import my feeds from Google Reader. If I click import it just hangs on the "Importing" page, which is odd as there is nothing to import.
The text says "You can safely navigate away from this page while your feeds are being imported " so it's confusing some of us who have not initiated an import.
How what kind of backlog will it keep for unread items? It's not that weird for me to not pay attention to a feed or collection of feeds that I don't have time for at the moment. This is one of my main issues with newsblur, which has a ridiculously low limit of 500 per feed max (based on the number of subscribers the feed has), if you aren't a paying member and it's a low subscription feed it could be as low as 25 posts or something.
When it comes to RSS reading, its all in the UI: how it is setup and how well one adjust to such an interface. As far as I am concerned, I cropped-up my own [1] and I am happy with the solution so far.
I really like the cleanliness of your layout. But I find the color scheme rather annoying.
The choice to use red for headlines is a pretty bad decision (sorry), I can only recommend you tone it down a bit or even chose a completely different color scheme. At least give us the option to change the colours ourselves.
Otherwise, great effort!
It's doing a fine job replacing Google Reader for me (I was otherwise going to use Feedly, who require me to learn a different UI).
Are you already using your own backend? It seems so, since it's showing me different articles and not sync read status from Google Reader (which seems to show new content sooner).
What's the meaning of the orange circle empty/filled?
So, many people have already had the time to switch from Google Reader. That means people have to be able to import feeds by OPML. Right now it seems like Google Reader is the only import option.
There seems to be https, that is very nice. But theoldreader.com offers me this too. I need an import option before trying this out.
Do consider sending out an announcement mail when you do. As it stands I'm content (but not happy) using another RSS reader. I'm not actively looking, but a good replacement would be wonderful indeed. As such, your reader runs the risk of being forgotten during the wait, which would definitely be a shame.
That said, sending unsolicited mails... you know the dilemma here.
- the red buttons sometimes gets broken for me on Chrome (27) - the text on them is either invisible (log in on the main page) or messed up (one letter over another)
- text is rendered poorly on Chrome and Opera, probably a fault of the browser+font combination, maybe you can try to experiment with different fonts
- did you think about something different than read/unread model? it was something that was irking me about Google Reader or now with Netvibes - the point of RSS reader is not to read it all, at least not when you have thousands of items to read
Import doesn't work, but the notification system is very sweet and unexpected. Can't wait to try this out with all my feeds. So far none of the 'son of reader' offerings have really done it for me.
Very nice, I'd love to be able to group my subscriptions in folders. Even better if I can navigate through all feeds in a folder combined instead of through individual feeds.
It looks nice, but I personally prefer more readable font. Source Sans looks gorgeous, but maybe use 400 instead 300 on body text. Or use darker color.
Is a website, is beautiful, is easy to use, has an API. You've hit on the first three, so when the API becomes public, I am so using this.
Are you hosting this yourself? Do you expect $9/year members to adequate cover the costs? I'd totally be willing to pay more if it means I don't have to suffer through another shutdown.
A few people have mentioned wanting to donate more. I could make a few more options for the donation amount. I figured I was on the high end at $9/yr. People don't like paying for software anymore.
