Google UnFAIL

I have a love/hate relationship with the iPhone version of Google Reader. A little over a week ago, Google launched a beta version of the iPhone interface for Google Reader and tears of joy ran down my face as I leapt through fields of clovers with puppies and bunnies.

Ok, maybe there wasn’t that much fanfare in the Nunemaker household, but it is a killer, I repeat, killer update. I love seeing perfect touches of JavaScript that make web applications more usable, for usability’s sake and not to prove that the developer knows how to read the Script.aculo.us wiki.

The new version (pictured above right) shows a list of items with nice bold headers and faded intro lines of text, which is cool, but that is not where the Reader engineers earn free beer. The perfect touch is literally a touch a way. Tap on an item and it expands, right in line, with the full post. There is a nice big star that is easy to hit if you want to favorite the post and you can do the typical share, keep unread and see original goodness. A few glides of your my mouse-click, strengthened, programmer finger later and I’m down to the next article. From there, I can continue to scan until I see something interesting, or I can touch the item and read another interesting post.

Granted, it’s not my job to create an iPhone interface for Google Reader, but I was so unhappy with the previous one, that I started too. I say that to give props where they are due. I don’t know if I could have come up with such a perfect interface interaction but I’m glad the Reader team did. Once again I love reading my feeds on my iPhone. Thanks Google. Also, I’m wondering how long until there are a crap load of iPhone web apps that use the interaction in a similar fashion.