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Comment by drharris | Hacker News Reader

I started with Feedly, but realized there is no OPML export, which locks me in. This Reader situation taught me to not be locked in ever again. Plus, I'm not entirely convinced the transition from the Google backend is going to be smooth, and I don't care for the interface. The Chrome extension also runs in the background and keeps my LastPass authentications open, a huge, huge security risk. I have since switched to The Old Reader, which has thus far been perfect for my needs. I like that it's once again a centralized website I can access anywhere.

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The web interface also requires you to install their browser plugin, which is less than ideal if you're using multiple computers.

I still don't understand why it requires a browser plugin at all. I find it very suspicious and it put me off Feedly.

This, totally. They basically have to make a custom app for every platform/browser, when a single responsive website would have done the trick. I really don't understand the rationale here. What does a plugin platform give them that a simple website does not, if not additional tracking behavior? Does their monetization strategy involve selling data?

Actually creating an add-on allowed a lot more than offering a simple web-site. Remember Feedly is not new, it's been out there for years. Back then, offering an add-on allowed them to lower the stress on their platform by allowing most of the network trafic to be directly between your browser and google's servers. Now they have migrated on their own Cloud platform, they will probably very soon offer a plain site version without the need for add-ons.

"They basically have to make a custom app for every platform/browser, when a single responsive website would have done the trick" ... well their are 2 things there: packaging add-ons for multiple platforms is not difficult. You create some kind of packaging wrapper code around a common codebase. It's building a codebase which works on many javascript and DOM engines that takes time and effort. So building a "responsive website" (that works on most browsers) is not much "easier" than packaging custom app for each browser.

That's a really good point. I would recommend upvoting the suggestions at their uservoice site. They're actively listening, although I'm sure they're busy. In fact, I believe the uservoice voting is one of the primary reasons Feedly is headed to Windows Phone 8.

Vote: https://feedly.uservoice.com/forums/192636-suggestions/sugge... Suggest: https://feedly.uservoice.com/forums/192636-suggestions

+1 I just switched due to your tip! I was a bit frustrated at Feedly's interface, because it was not seemless for my reading style (read by feed).

I was just about to set up my own RSS server, but that seems unnecessary now.

I really like the Feedly iOS interface for reading, but the app needs some work before it's any good as a primary feed aggregator. The main issue is that it forgets the Google authentication after a few days, even after an update which claimed to fix that issue. That doesn't fill me with confidence that the transition to their backend will be as smooth as they claimed.

I don't like that the web version of Feedly takes over Google Chrome and seems to make it crash occasionally.

In the end I have moved to Yoleo, as it is a standalone web app and has a nicer interface.

Agreed, the extension was very invasive and broke Chrome in many frustrating ways. Memory usage was also off the charts, and that's not something I usually pay much attention to in a browser. I'll try Yoleo, I had not heard of that.

I've basically done the same thing, going through Feedly to The Old Reader (TOR). The only downside to TOR at the moment is it seems to take a while to update the feeds, forcing me to manually hit the refresh button on the feeds I read more frequently.

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