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Simply Mobile

18 December 2007 / 1 Comments

It’s interesting what constraints can bring out in people.

The iPhone, and its mobile version of Safari, is a perfect case in point. iPhone optimised sites are – for better or worse – springing up all over the place, but quite frequently they’re actually better then the ‘full’ site they’re complementing. As I linked to on Friday, Fox News actually have a very nice iPhone site which is simple and easy to navigate around, unlike the sprawling mess that is their main site.

A better case in point is Bloglines. As long time readers will know Bloglines is my (current) feed reader of choice, although of late it’s been going downhill. The original interface is very long in the tooth (it uses frames!) and seems to be quite unstable, whereas the new beta version suffers from missing the features I depend upon from the existing version (like a “Read all” function) and uses lots of CPU in Safari at least.

I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, hoping that the beta version gets improved enough before they make it the only version.

Enter stage right comes the iPhone version of Bloglines, which can be found – confusingly enough – at i.bloglines.com.

It’s better then both the main versions, so much so that I’ve considered using it full time instead. The interface is so much clearer, with the use of iPhone-standard Helvetica really helping things (both the main interfaces have appalling typography and design). It’s also quicker, I guess because the pages it’s loading are simpler. What I would dearly love – if any Bloglines developers are reading – is a main interface that looked very similar, with the iPhone style feed list down the side and the main feed section on the right. No more, no less.

Call it Bloglines Lite, maybe?

Either way, there’s no doubt that iBloglines for me at least is almost the iPhone killer app – I’ve been using it so much more then I ever thought I would.

I guess this comes down to two main factors: firstly, as the folks at 37signals always bang on about, simple is better. Secondly, I have a hunch that iPhone optimised sites are probably done by one guy in the development team that’s just got an iPhone, and wants to do something really cool on it. Don’t underestimate what one guy with a bunch of passion and a vision can do.

Comments

You’re not far off. It took two guys with iPhones about four days of dev time for the front end. Joe Hewitt’s iUI helped a ton. Also don’t worry, Beta will improve a lot before it becomes the default site.

I agree that simple is better for most things, but the whole point of feed readers is having users completely control how they read content. This requires tons of customization options (views, preferences, different information sources such as RSS/atom feeds, package tracking numbers, weather, saved searches, etc.) that there’s really no way to keep it simple. It’s a tough trade-off. The iPhone site may be simple, but it lacks many features. There is no way to add or remove feeds or change preferences such as how many items to show per page. The only view is full text view, and you can only view unread items. It’s a great iPhone site, but for most people it can only supplement, not replace full-fledged Bloglines.

Dec 19, 02:18 AM

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