I am a fan of NetNewsWire, and since I use multiple computers, I thought it would be nice to use the NewsGator syncing capability. I have used this before, way back when I used the Newsgator Outlook plugin.
I ran into some issues (it had created a bunch of empty folders, which I remember happening a few years ago) and I decided to go to the web-based version to try to clean it up.
Now, this isn’t meant to be “pick on newsgator” day, but the entire experience was painful. First, if I selected more than a couple of folders to delete it would take an eternity to do the deletions, and in fact a few times it just timed out. That made me have to go back and de-select a few until it would go through. Extremely frustrating (especially when you are trying to clean up!).
The interface itself consists of the typical tree view on the left, and content opens up on the right. For me, the app is painfully slow as every click on the tree is a full page reload which has to render the entire tree, as well as getting the content for that node. If I am on a site that has a normal link, I expect a page reload. When I click on a tree node, I am trained to be in “desktop mode” and expect it to happen pretty darn quick. It is this perceived effect that makes everything feel so slow.
I also glanced at my status bar and would see what seemed to be mini requests for each feed from my browser. I have a fair few feeds, so this made things even worse.
This type of design choice will make people think “ajax sucks and is slow”. Compare it to Google Reader and others, that feel a lot faster, and do not do refreshes in places you wouldn’t expect.
