If you’re anything like me on my and do most of your Google Reading on a relatively small screen (MacBook 13″), or on one of those nifty NetBooks I keep hearing about, then you might like to try this.
Stylish is a Firefox Extension that can apply custom CSS styles to certain webpages, in most cases fixing a user-identified problem with the design. DJBullwinkle has written a custom style called Google Reader Absolutely Compact which does exactly what it says on the box.
Basically, it makes several improvements on the much bloated default interface, allowing you to maximize the efficiency of your screen real estate.
- Article text spans full width of screen
- Compact no-frills borders around items
- Almost all heading stuff removed, save for the search box
- Narrower left-hand column
Visit the link for a preview of the changes, or just try it out! This has been added to my list of essential Firefox tweaks; it’s a godsend.
I should mention, this also removes some navigation buttons, so you’re gonna want to get up to speed on the keyboard shortcuts by pressing “?” in Google Reader.
My only real criticism would be to increase the size of article headings so they stand out a bit more, which you can do by changing the font-size from 100% to 140% as below:
/* shrink titles, but add underlining for visual identification */
.entry .entry-title {
font-size:140% !important; }
I will conclude by remarking on a trend I’ve noticed in online interfaces since using websites which tailor their design to the iPhone and iPod Touch. These interfaces are some of the most efficient and user-friendly I’ve used to date: Google Reader, Google Talk Gadget, Gmail, FaceBook, Last.fm, ANZ Internet Banking, there are more. Web designers should be reminded that only when forced to trim a design back to the bare essentials, do you realise what those essentials actually are. You discard all those tacked on superfluous features (Google is notorious for this, just look at Gmail), until only the functional ones remain.
Happy reading!
