gReader 1.2: The "Yes / yes / yes / I know they added a search bar" release / journal / hicksdesign

11/09/07

gReader 1.2: The "Yes, yes, yes, I know they added a search bar" release

The “Yes, yes, yes, I know they added a search bar” release

Here we go then, pretty much all cleaned up and ready to use! Apart from the tidying up, having the search bar meant there was space to show the account bar (which was previously hidden until you hovered over it). Also, the splitter icon in the status bar bottom right now actually toggles the sidebar when you click it!

New search bar in the google reader theme

The info.rtf file also lists known bugs, and areas that I intend to work on in the future. Stylish users, you will need to update both the main style and the spinner.

Changes for 1.2

Fixed messiness caused by the new search bar, such as the sidebar width
Status Bar in the right hand pane now collapses properly to the left when the sidebar is hidden
The new sidebar toggle has been replaced by the OS X style splitter bottom left (so now it actually does something!)
Loading notification re-instated
Search inputs and button restyled (looks best in webkit browsers)
The Account bar is now visible – no longer hidden until hover

Download gReader.zip | Update on userstyles.org | How to Install

Technorati Tags Tags: google, googlereader, theme

Comments | RSS

pacheco said 245 days ago:

Fantastic. Always appreciated, Jon.

Bryan said 245 days ago:

Thanks for the update, it keeps looking better and better every time.

Michael Grinstead said 245 days ago:

Thanks Jon

bernd said 245 days ago:

thanks

Brutal said 245 days ago:

Oh man! That is so hot!

Peter said 245 days ago:

Thanks for the update!

I still have one issue, though: the #chrome has padding-top defined in relative units, which causes my system to display the viewer-header slightly more to the top than intended. Changing that padding to 31px solves that problem.

Charles said 245 days ago:

thank you thank you thank you thank you!

Jay said 244 days ago:

love it love it love it.

One minor bug however – in the trends section, the unselected trends categories are white text on white. A bit hard to read that way :)

Steven Garrity said 244 days ago:

I actually feel guilty posting bugs, since you’ve been so generous with the work (more reason for it to be collaborative, maybe?), but the fixed-size Search button isn’t large enough for the default font on my Firefox-on-Linux install. Here’s a screenshot.

#10

Jonathan said 244 days ago:

Thanks Jon! It’s so fantastic you’re doing this. Makes Google Reader so much more fun and usable.

#11

Ran Barton said 244 days ago:

Thank you. I am stuck on Windoze at work, and this is a great way to feel less stranded.

Like Jay, I also see the white-on-white text issue with the Trends graphs.

#12

vectr said 244 days ago:

I think “Someone” at Apple needs to make a top level phone call (via one of those mythical transponder devices that aren’t available in the UK) to “Someone” at Google, so that you get an advanced sneak-peek* into any radical redesign† of Google Reader going forward.

After all, you’re tirelessly inproving “synergy” between the two.
Perhaps a 99c charge for every feed read via your theme?

* …and a teensy-tiny slice of that ad-search revenue, hmm?

† ie: Google (reader) announces “Search”!

Thanks btw :)

#13

Riddle said 244 days ago:

Hi Jon,

I simply love your skin! However, few things didn’t appeal to me, being a Windows user so I decided to change it a bit. (screenshot).

Regards :)

PS: I’m sorry for the same comment in prev. GR entry, I posted that by mistake (wanted to post here). If you could delete it there, I’dmore than happy. Sorry!

#14

Ben Kessler said 244 days ago:

Thanks so much for fixing this so quickly and doing a bangup job. When I originally sent you an email about it you got back instantly and I appreciate the effort you’ve put into it.

#15

nick said 244 days ago:

It’s wonderful, Mr. Hicks! :)

#16

Jon Hicks said 244 days ago:

First of all chaps, don’t feel bad about sending bug reports. There are many areas/features of gReader that I don’t use, so would never see the problems you’re seeing unless you tell me!

@ Riddle – thats the idea, if you don’t like something, change it!

#17

Sam Daams said 244 days ago:

Cool bananas; looking good once again!!

#18

Matthew said 244 days ago:

Is it an intended side-effect that the link formatting at Google.com changes too? I tried it on the OW (latest sneaky peek) and Safari 2.x, and both had the different look.

The Reader skin itself looks fantastic! Thanks!

#19

Steve said 244 days ago:

Looks great, and so quick to respond to changes too!!

My only issue so far is the dropdown for the search box. It appears below the header for the right pane, partially obscuring some of the options in the dropdown.

Thanks a lot for this.

#20

Steve said 244 days ago:

Follow-up to previous comment…

Same applies to Feed Settings dropdown.

Thanks Jon.

#21

Jon Hicks said 244 days ago:

I should’ve said “send in bug reports” with “but check that they aren’t in the info.rtf file first”! ;o)

#22

Keith B. said 244 days ago:

Thanks for the update — Google Reader is barely tolerable without this skin.
Except there’s a bit of a problem with it in OmniWeb. Google Reader itself displays fine, but somehow the sidebar formatting from Reader carries over into Gmail, resulting in this ugly mess.

(The sidebar format carryover into Gmail happened in previous versions of the theme, too, but this is the first version that’s caused the stretch.)

#23

Jon Hicks said 244 days ago:

Yes, this will happen in Omniweb and Safari – sorry no way around this. Its the way they apply custom css.

#24

Keith B. said 244 days ago:

Well… sod. Back to the grotty old default skin, I guess.

#25

Oliver Smith said 244 days ago:

Cheers John. Great stuff!

#26

Nick Parker said 244 days ago:

Excellent work Jon, have you considered carrying the theme over to gmail as well?

#27

Luke Dorny said 244 days ago:

Hoooraw!!!
nice work, jon.

#28

~bc said 244 days ago:

I can’t read the RTF file since I did the Stylish install, so apologies if this has been mentioned, but I got an yellow dialog box at the top of the screen, which looks to be telling me there’s an update to Google Gears, but the yellow box wasn’t accounted for in the CSS changes. I don’t know how you’d find that to hack that, but there’s my big report. Otherwise: beautiful.

#29

Douglas said 244 days ago:

Jon, Great skin. Been using it for a while no but with the new version the refresh button doesn’t work anymore in my firefox in windows (don’t remember that problem in linux)

#30

Alan O'Rourke said 243 days ago:

Thank you.

#31

Lisa Price said 243 days ago:

Thank you for making my reading experience so much better – but can you do something for iGoogle now please? Pleeeease? Their themes are freaking me out.

#32

ketsugi said 243 days ago:

Thanks! I’ve had to turn off the theme for a few days since it was so badly broken by the Reader update, waiting for an update to the theme and again you do not disappoint.

#33

Scott Likens said 243 days ago:

Just to note, perhaps it’s my version of Camino (running a nightly build) however the Refresh Button does not work.

Not a huge ordeal, but it was a nice feature :)

#34

Jay said 242 days ago:

One thing that would be REALLY cool to add would be to allow clicking on “All Items” after it’s already selected to refresh the “All” feed. Right now I always have to click on something else, and then click on “All” again.

Seems that it should operate the same way as the feeds themselves do – but for some reason, the items at the top don’t allow re-clicking on them.

Of course, I’d do it myself if I had any clue…. :)

Thanks again!
Jay

#35

Jack Hynes said 242 days ago:

Great update!

Bug: Same as #19, ‘All items’ drop down menu opens under ‘All Items’ title bar. Using Firefox in Ubuntu Feisty.

#36

Leo Kennis said 242 days ago:

Small problem I have in Opera: the “list view” etc. links show up at the wrong location. See here: http://tinyurl.com/3yjxv8

#37

Douglas said 241 days ago:

Hi… love the skin. Been a user for ages, but just wondering if I’m the only one experiencing this bug (it’s the same for me on windows and ubuntu linux)?. The “Refresh” button for the feeds on the bottom of the left sidebar is absolutely unresponsive.

#38

KAugust said 241 days ago:

Wow this is amazing, and rather easy to install. Thanks :D.

#39

faisal said 241 days ago:

really nice
I only wish their was a way to remove the useless junk at the right of the screen in the home page

#40

chikitychinaguy said 241 days ago:

hey,
first thing, great style.
i love it.
i almost died when it got messed up from the search bar update.
there are a few glitches though:
when toggled to full screen mode ( by pressing “u” ),
the little arrow to the right of the RSS feed name is boxed in white.
then when clicked, the whole side bar gets messed up.
these are just minor, obscure glitches,
but i want to help you make this style as complete as possible,
so here you go,
and thanks for such a great style.

#41

John Marshall said 240 days ago:

This seems like the ideal thing to use with webrunner
It will let you load Google Reader like it is a separate application. You can probably install stylish on webrunner, although its install.rdf might need to be changed. You can also modify webrunner’s userChrome.css like you would do with firefox, although the webrunner profile is in a different location. It’s still in the App Data Dir though(Application Data on windows, ~/.webrunner on linux).
I think the webrunner download even comes with a premade webapp file for Google Reader, although if there isn’t one, its easy to edit webapp files in a text editor.

#42

Alexander Atallah said 240 days ago:

Great job on the search bar fix! It’s been a long time since I’ve used this style sheet because I could never get it to work on Safari 3 beta, as you’ve already noted.

But I finally got it to work by downloading Creammonkey (http://creammonkey.sourceforge.net/) and using the style script from Userstyles.com! I’m very happy to have a pretty Google Reader again.

Alexander

#43

Jon Hicks said 240 days ago:

Alexander – many thanks for that! I’d forgotten about creammonkey, anf it works really well!! Do you know how it works to update the script?

#44

Alexander Atallah said 240 days ago:

Jon, Creammonkey won’t automatically update the script when it’s changed, if that’s what you mean. I figure that since I’m subscribed to your blog I can just remove the old scripts and download the new ones.

There are a few drawbacks to using Creammonkey, though. For one, the Loading gif you have does not show up (just Google’s orange one). And if you collapse the sidebar and browse feeds full screen, opening the sidebar again results in the loss of all the navigation icons and links. However, the fact that the script will only affect www.google.com/reader is fantastic compared to the old SafariStand.

#45

Jon Hicks said 240 days ago:

“For one, the Loading gif you have does not show up (just Google’s orange one)”

- You need to load the spinner style separately, as userstyles restricts the size of the files!

The other problem is a webkit bug, rather than Creammonkey.

#46

Alexander Atallah said 240 days ago:

Thanks, I missed the second script file. I noticed that the Loading gif works great with Creammonkey now, but with the new style sheet for Firefox/Camino it jiggles a little at the end of its rotations. I’m guessing it’s a Gecko bug, but is there maybe something different between the two gifs?