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Show HN: Nuesbyte v2

nuesbyte.com

46 pointsrbrcurtis33 comments

A month or so ago 7hundredand77 posted nuesbyte here, and many of you liked it but it had some significant problems. I offered to help him with it, and today we'd like to show it to you all again.

Since then we've rewritten the entire thing in client side js with a nodejs REST API backend, added google reader imports, kb shortcuts, ssl, and a whole bunch of other features.

Let us know what you think of the updated site.

Here's the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5471928

Thanks, Ryan

At first glance, it looks great. UI is slightly confusing at first, but nothing I can't get past. Most importantly, it has the primary feature I want in a reader: I can open it up on my phone and read articles in slap-spacebar-to-continue mode until I fall asleep. One-finger operation FTW. Haven't seen this from anyone besides Google Reader yet. Also love the vi-style keyboard nav (j/k for next/prev).

One slight complaint: on the desktop, I'd kill the article-expanding animation for navigating through a feed. Instead of a nice clean i'm-scrolling-through-articles feeling, you get this weird jittery i'm-scrolling-through-articles-that-are-expanding-and-collapsing thing where the unexpanded portion of the feed below your current article dances up and down. Even on a feed like HN where the expansion/contraction is fairly minimal (or perhaps particularly on a feed like that), the list ends up doing this strange up-and-down convulsion that's very unpolished-looking and distracting.

I vehemently dislike how they don't inform you that this is a paid service until after you've signed up. I signed up, but was unwilling to pay for the service (it doesn't seem novel enough to warrant use over like HN and Feedly, which constitute the bulk of my reading; and also I have no money).

Due to their disingenuousness, they have my email despite the fact that this is a product which I have no intention of using.

Transparency is important, and this sort of obfuscatory bullshit is not ok. Tell people what the product is before taking their information.

I agree with your general sentiment here; it was a surprise and they really should be more transparent about the pricing model. That said, they do offer a free week to decide whether you would like to spend $24/year (paid monthly) on the service.

I much prefer this (even imperfect) approach to how feedbin doesn't let you even try it until you provide credit card info and pay the $2.

This is a paid site? I've signed up for it and it seems great, but so far I haven't seen any indication that there is anything to pay for.

I think it was free, and then it became paid, and now it's free again.

Freemium might be better. Or suggested article advertizement on the right? They pretty much do that already.

Some bugs & gotchas for me:

* Select Layout -> Small. But it is not remembered across all feeds. I have to change it for each.

* Click RSS on menu bar. Then under "My Feeds", click the '+' icon on one of the feeds. Doesn't do anything.

* Select one of the feeds, say "Digg Top Stories". Select Layout -> Small. Now why is that text in orange (Digg Top Stories) shown below title of every feed? I already know that from the top menu bar. Similarly, the time "10 hours ago". I would prefer to hide these two things until I expand the article. It feels like too much text-noise. Just let me glance the headlines in one line.

* How can I move feeds to a different folder? Drag-n-drop doesn't seem to work.

* The UI is mobile-unfriendly. Open the site on Firefox for mobile and just pinch-zoom to see what happens.

That said, sincere thanks for all the effort you guys have put in!

Most of these bugs will disappear if you create an account / register. The "guest" user doesnt remember settings for individual users.

sorry, let me respond to your points item by item.

layout will save if you create an account.

I guess we overlooked the + icon. Create an account, goto "RSS" and you can select groups and then select feeds to go into each group just by selecting feeds.

Point 3 is great. The small layout doesnt need that feed link on every item.

to move a feed into a folder, goto RSS, select or create the folder, then select the feed. Or, assuming you've created an account, click on the feed on the left bar, then hover over options in the header, groups, and select the group or create a new one.

We're away that its mobile unfriendly; creating a mobile site is our next initiative.

You might want to display some kind of prompt to the user, when they change a setting, to tell them they should create an account. Probably would also help your conversion rates too.

The quick add feed functionality is annoying because it requires that my cursor stay in the box horizontally until I hit "Add Feed" after the "Add Feed url" textbox pops up. So I have to play maze to get there. (I don't mind, just pointing this out).

Also the "add feed" button in "discover" and "my feeds" doesn't seem to like me, I click it and nothing happens. However the "quick add" bar up top does (with the maze caveat, see prev. paragraph).

Edited to Add: Also does it not play nice with some FeedBurner RSS? I am attempting to add (I made an account, this seems nice guys!) "http://feeds.feedburner.com/schneier/fulltext, but it won't take it.

good feedback, thank you. I'll look into the feedburner issue. We're using the feender library in nodejs which doesnt seem to recognize that as a valid feed, but clearly it is...

I needed a replacement for GR and this one is nice. subscribed for now (you have my $2).

You need to give me an option to scroll down automatically when I press (n)ext, instead of sliding. It's frustrating because I have a lot of things to read and I don't need to wait around for it to slide down.

EDIT: Maybe a good idea to add an inline "report bug" feature. You guys have a lot of squirmy things happening on your page and I would be more inclined to list them directly.

we can definitely get that sorted out for you!

The guest account is quite basic. To see/test all features, I would highly recommend creating a trail account:

* Arrange by new / arrange by old

* View all items / view only unseen items

* Quick add feeds

* Create feed groups, discover feeds

* Like/visited tracking

* Remembered layout settings

* Google Reader Import

Hotkeys include:

* O: Open

* J: Next

* K: Previous

* U: Wide Layout

Great. I was checking nuesbyte regularly for changes and now, i can finally import my gr feeds. Since google announced the shutdown, this looked like the only alternative to me. I'm excited how the reading flow will be and i hope i will not have to code further on my own bash rss backend fetcher + php frontend (which btw works :D)

Very nice, very clean. I like it a lot.

Could use a mobile site though, pretty problematic via Chrome on Android 4.2.2

I immediately noticed that it positively snaps - instantly responsive. I'd love to read something about what all is going on behind the scenes.

I'll write up an article on the backend in a few days. I put a lot of thought and time into making it as fast as possible.

We're working on a mobile site and app. Both should be out in a few weeks.

So now that you have my email you want money?

How about you make that more clear, eh...

Yeah, sorry about that. We've gotten some feedback that we need to make the subscription model more clear up front. Please do check out the full set of features though.

Are there any plans to reach out to any app developers (e.g., Reeder) to work out an integration? I think that's a pretty key requirement: solid integration with high quality cross platform feed reading applications.

http://hostr.co/file/Yw8IN8koio5t/01.png

What am I doing wrong?

Not sure, I added reddit.com/r/livesound and it seemed to work. I will look into why the direct path doesn't capture.

Is there a way to export my feeds should this service ever go the way of google reader (or I decide I want to use a different one)?

if this service ever goes the way of google reader, I promise you I will create a way to export your feeds. :)

It's the simplest, yet it's a powerful candidate for my Google Reader migration IMO. :)

Glad to hear it! We're definitely open to suggestions if you have any.

The name makes me OCD so hard.

i'm missing it.

The "nues", it just looks so wrong in English.

How do you remove a feed from the listing?

You really need some basic landing pages that give people the impression that this is a legitimate service. I forwarded info to a feed provider that's blocking your feed requests (they're a bit aggressive about abuse and want to whitelist), and I'm sure the webmaster's next step is going to be to look at your homepage, decide there's no way to contact you, shrug, and write you off.

This is very unfortunate, because I think nuesbyte is the best GR substitute I've seen yet (for my desired feature set). There is just no information about whether anything is happening with the site, who made it, future plans, status, or anything. Each time I go looking for information I wonder if the project has simply been abandoned.

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