Google Reader updates again, provides major usability increase

The Google Reader team has just released another update to their product, for those of us who increase the font size on the page. The new feature lets you increase the font of only the current article you are reading.

If this sounds simple and even useless to you, then you are not someone who occaisonally does increase the font. This is a very welcome addition for me. Now when I'm reading with an increased font size, the interface doesn't blow up as well, making what used to be nearly useless usable again.

Here's what used to happen to the interface (notice the buttons and search box at the top collide):


And here's what it looks like now (interface original size, just the post has font increased)


The only minor bug I've found so far is the current folder I'm reading also has it's font increased, which I actually don't mind so much, in fact it may not be a bug at all. However, when I switch to all items from a folder, the original folder font size is still increased.

Good job Google Reader team, especially Mihai Parparita, keep it up.

EDIT (3:19pm 5/8/2008): Forgot to mention, I'm using the Better GReader plugin for Firefox, but I had the same usability issues with the standard version of Google Reader

Google Reader allows me to (surreptitiously) alter the text of any article.

I glad to see Google Reader's new features. I saw another article that I received from Louis Gray's Google Reader Shared Items again. Thanks for keeping on top of the world for me Louis. :-)


The (current) top item in my Shared Items feed shows that you can alter the text of any article, I couldn't find the permalink in my Shared Items Feed.



This could lead to misleading people by changing the content, or even adding more content. It could end up with me not being able to trust content from shared items anymore.



The article appears in my shared items feed with the article changed with the text I included. Note that you can alter full html markup of the article, potentially leading to other sorts of attacks.

Hopefully Google changes this back soon, I'm content with them continuing to post the full article in my Shared Items feed.

UPDATE: Another problem I've had with the new Notes feature is that there is no way to edit the notes (as far as I can find), all you can do is un-share them.