River Of News

Dave Winer posted a pointer to an RSS reader developer struggling with the best way to present feeds to users. Dave points out (rightly so) that he has been suggesting a 'River of News' layout for some time (like 3 years). And Dave is mostly right- 'River of News' is a great way to read. A web page has a form factor that is simply superior to most alternatives- it is a flowing layout with large fonts, images, and scrolling behavior that works for users.  It is like reading a web page, which is a pretty awesome experience.

This works pretty well.  The problem I see with the 'River of News' is that it pays no mind to what you've read and what you haven't read. For some feeds, this isn't really much of a problem- if I miss a post from Engadget, not a big deal. I do have feeds, however, that provide extremely valuable information (how about search feeds about the product that I work on, search feeds for our competitors, or my feed from our support forum). I care a lot that I read each of the posts and that I don't miss any.  So what I want is a 'River of News' that maintains read / unread state- it provides the reading experience of a web page, but is mindful of making sure that I see new things and don't see old things.

That's why I love the Onfolio newspaper view- its designed to deliver on the 'River of News' but preserve my read state so I don't miss anything.  Maybe the river needs a little updating after 3 years?

Comments

[Dave Winer]

1. It's six years not three.

2. It only shows you new stuff not old stuff.

[Charles Teague]

You're right- not sure where I got 3!

You're right about the interactive newspaper only showing the new items. There are a couple of things about the newspaper that are worth noting:

- We do provide a drop down at the top that lets you see either unread only or all items. You can customize the newspaper behavior to be whichever you'd prefer, by default.

- We let you see a newspaper for any level of your feed folder hierarchy (so I can go folder by folder, for example) or for the whole thing. You can choose whether you'd like a river or a tributary :).

I appreciate you taking the time to comment, because I really think that you have the reading experience right- the browser and html is an experience that is excellent. That said, there are some manageability advantages to the 3 pane style interactive readers. With our newspaper, we were really hoping that we'd provide both!