My current feed reader is NewsAlloy. It is a online feed reader loaded with AJAX goodness. The features I like the best are keyboard shortcuts when I use it on a desktop, river of news style presentation and lots of customization like number of posts shown per page, show only unread posts, sorting order…
But the best thing about the service is the how quick the developer, lordtime, responds to feature requests. I have requested new features a couple of times now and both times he has added the feature within a day or two! Amazing considering he runs the entire service all by himself (I think).
I use NewsAlloy mostly on my Tablet PC in slate mode. As mush as I like the keyboard shortcuts I can not use them in this mode. Plus in portrait mode I like as much width for the feeds as possible. So I requested a couple of features.
NewsAlloy has a floating bar (shown on the right) on the right of the feeds. This has icons for options like select all, archive, subscribe, etc… This is customizable too. I wanted a new icon here that will jump to the next unread post. Such an icon makes using NewsAlloy a pleasure in the slate mode. All I have to do after reading a post is to tap on the ‘downward arrow’ icon and go to the next post. Since this is a floating bar I do not have to move my hand at all plus because it is on the right (I am right handed) I do not have to move my hand across the screen to do this operation.
Once I finish reading a page all I have to do is select all the posts with the plus icon and archive it. For all this I do not have to move my had much. Cool.
My other feature request was to have an option to hide the side bar on the left. This bar shows the feeds list, folders, shortcuts… These are features I do not use often. In portrait screen orientation this also reduces the screen real estate available for the feeds. Now the icon highlighted in the above screen shot allows me to hide the side bar.
Of all the feed readers I have used this is by far the most Tablet PC friendly one. Cheers to LordTime for providing such a excellent service.