How to Add Custom CSS to Google Reader in Chrome

Posted July 30, 2010 – 8:28 pm in: Uncategorized

When I switched to Google Reader from Netvibes Wasabi, I created a custom skin using a Google Chrome extension called Reader Plus. The result was to make Reader look a bit like my old Wasabi layout which I found so much more readable.

Here’s the details:

Netvibes Wasabi – A Very Readable Layout

Here’s a screenshot of my old Netvibes Wasabi reader – one of the basic ‘official’ themes of the zillions they offer. This layout was just a dream to read. I loved the spacing, the use of favicons, the nice date headers in the item stream, and the colors, among other things.

Netvibes skin How to Add Custom CSS to Google Reader in Chrome

In general, Netvibes comes with a lot, lot more configuration and, especially, theming options than does Google Reader. One feature that I especially liked with the “Give feed items more space” option – this incrementally opened up the spacing giving feed items just the right amount of breathing room.

Google Reader – Too Dense and Cluttered

Here’s a screenshot of the same feeds in the default Google Reader skin.

The main differences are too much white, item list and feeds sidebar are much too dense, and there’s a lot of unnecessary visual clutter (e.g., stars on every item). It’s hard to believe that the same company that designed a clutter-free search page and it’s highly efficient and readable search results format came up with this.

  1 Comment  |  Tags: ,

RSS Feed Readers: Changing from Netvibes Wasabi to Google Reader

Posted July 29, 2010 – 3:55 pm in: computers

I’ve finally done it: I’ve changed over from Netvibes Wasabi to Google Reader as my main RSS reader.

Back in March, I did a detailed comparison of Windows RSS readers and concluded that Netvibes Wasabi and Google Reader were the two best feed readers.

For desktop viewing, the main tradeoff at that time was between design / readability and feed handling. Google Reader was hands-down better at handling a wide range of different types of feeds. Netvibes was, to my eye at least, the hands-down winner in terms of design and readability.

Despite the problems with the feed handling, I ended up sticking with Netvibes.

But as of yesterday, that’s changed: I have now permanently switched over to Google Reader and dropped Netvibes.

The reason for the change was three-fold:

  • I have some new responsibilities and simply can’t work around Netvibes feed handling issues any longer
  • I found a Chrome extension that allows you to easily create your own skin for Google Reader, so I added some custom CSS and now have a Netvibes-type layout (see separate post)
  • I’m need better mobile access to my feeds and that favors Google Reader by a lot
  1 Comment  |  Tags: ,