RSS Feeds
Speed Up Google Reader Load Times
Posted by Adam Pash at 10:52 AM on April 2, 2008
Blogger Samar Kamat loves keeping up with his favourite web sites with Google Reader, but noticed Reader can take forever to load feeds with longer items. His solution? Switch to List View.
The default view in Reader is the Expanded View, which is great for 80% of feeds, like Slashdot, where posts are short and concise. However, for very verbose and object-heavy posts, it takes a load off of your bandwidth to load only one page at a time. So next time you're waiting for the images on your tutorial to load, just switch to List View and enjoy the speed.
I prefer List View at all times and haven't experienced the slow-downs Samar speaks of, but I'm also on a pretty quick connection. Either way, this probably won't make a big difference on a fast connection, but if Reader seems sluggish when it's loading longer articles, it might be worth a try. If you've noticed similar speed differences in Google Reader, or you have your own methods for boosting Reader speed, let's hear about it in the comments.
Tags: google | google reader | how to | optimisation | timesavers
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
camson
Posted April 2, 2008 4:25 PM
It's really easy to switch between the two.. press the number 1 key for Extended and 2 for List.
pomokey
Posted 10:44 AM 2/4/08
setting it to view new items only also reduces the load tiem significantly.
pomokey
Sam_Zebian
Posted 10:43 AM 2/4/08
@LethAL: Yea, I thought this would be some sort of Firefox extension or something, not just a tip to use list view (which I don't personally like to use. Anyways, Google's apps are slow because they are composed of heavy-ajax scripting.
Sam_Zebian
LethAL
Posted 10:23 AM 2/4/08
I don't think this will make much difference to me, but a way to improve loading times for the app would be nice. (Why are google's apps so slow to load, anyway?)
LethAL
USBman
Posted 11:38 AM 2/4/08
There have been reports about the latest Firefox 3 beta release vastly improving load times on sites like Gmail (which I tested, and found to be true). Maybe the same might be true of Google Reader??
USBman
MarkONeill
Posted 12:25 PM 2/4/08
I've always had it on "list view" - it's the only way I'm able to skim 279 RSS feeds a day and pick out the most interesting ones. Who reads every single post anyway?
MarkONeill
Myles
Posted 12:09 PM 2/4/08
Common sense?
Guess not.
:P
Myles
BlogsOfSteel
Posted 12:51 PM 2/4/08
Yeah, list view is my preference also, prolly have too many feeds, but hey they are free!
BlogsOfSteel
iqag
Posted 1:38 PM 2/4/08
I had such high hopes from the title. Reader seems to have gotten even slower in the past few weeks. Maybe it's just me. I haven't noticed any huge difference between Firefox 2.x and the Firefox 3 beta. The initial render seems slower, but the loading of additional items is much faster on Kazehakase. Has anyone had better luck with other browsers?
(Attn. Google:) A feature which might make List View even faster is if we could "mark as read" those items we've already scrolled past but not read without marking the entire folder including items not yet loaded.
iqag
Nxqd3051990
Posted 3:41 PM 2/4/08
I've used list view a long time ago. When I used gReader the first time I think :)
Nxqd3051990
Morton Fox
Posted 6:02 PM 2/4/08
I've been using List View too. List View keeps track of read/unread items better than Expanded View, which is a bit loose that way.
Morton Fox
djxspike
Posted 1:40 AM 3/4/08
I'm still waiting on auto-tagging....
djxspike
aticatac
Posted 6:10 PM 2/4/08
After being a long time user of Google Reader I actually do the opposite, I hate the "small" loading times between each feed is loading (I am subscribing to 249 feeds). Instead I changed to expanded view and I only show the new items, this seems much faster for me. A friend of mine is also a internet power user and to make Google Reader as fast as possible he don't use "another" tab in Firefox, instead he uses Safari, that way Google Reader gets incredible fast.
aticatac
Sarihiari
Posted 5:15 PM 2/4/08
It really is not a better solution. You get a list of one liners that may or may not tell what is inside the post.
I go to "Expanded view" and give it the time to load, and then use keyboard short cuts to skim through the posts, and I can see enough information immediately on the screen to know if I want to read the whole thing or not. (Work especially well for Kotaku) :)
Sarihiari
vrillusions
Posted 4:59 PM 2/4/08
Yeah I always used list view. I completely forgot it's the default it's been that long.
One thing that's really sped things up considerably is firefox 3 beta. It's night and day difference between FF2 and FF3. With FF3 it literally feels as fast as an application on my desktop.
I use it in list mode and only show new items.
vrillusions
guibom
Posted 8:31 AM 3/4/08
I use the regular view.. I only switch to list (shortcut: 1 and 2 on the keyboard) to check my stared itens that I mark to read later. It's fast for me, but I also only show the new itens.
@MarkONeill: I do! I can't see if it's interesting by the title alone, so I quickly skim the feeds (about 300+/day) on the regular view, stop and read the ones that are small, and Star the ones that I want to read later.
guibom
Viajero
Posted 7:41 PM 3/4/08
Because I have 200 feeds, list view is the way to go. I keep my font size small, and the Subscription List minimized out of the way, so the post's title and first line is usually fine for telling me if I'm interested. If not, I just toggle "O", and it all goes fast enough.
Keyboard shortcuts are everything for me in terms of speed. Also keeping the number of open tabs down to a few (or using Safari if I don't want to close those other tabs).
RSS has to be done efficiently; otherwise it morphs into yet another beast that steals time from me and subtracts from my life.
Viajero