I have to say, the ultimate form of laziness is posing musings to your weblog that are really questions in disguise. For example, I’m about to type up some “comments” on SharpReader that are, in fact, desperate pleas for help, either from the author (who can add features that will placate me), or users of SharpReader, who can tell me how to do the things that I’m trying to accomplish. This is also a form of arrogance, since it’s assumed that the author of SharpReader will somehow see these comments and respond. Of course, SharpReader has been out for less than a week, so I’m not expecting miracles. In any case, I could have started this entry with the next paragraph, but I didn’t, in the interests of brutal honesty and full disclosure.

I started using SharpReader yesterday, since my man Yole has said he’s throwing in the towel on Syndirella. There are a few issues that I’m struggling with:

  • The whole paradigm of deleting items and marking them read is slightly confusing to me. Since you’re not really deleting the items, it seems odd to “delete” them from within SharpReader. I guess it provides a convenient way to get rid of things you don’t want to look at any more and keep interesting items. I just have to get used to it. I’m not sure whether items that were deleted show back up if they’re updated on the site.
  • There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get rid of a bunch of items at once. I’m probably just missing it.
  • I can’t get links to open consistently in Mozilla. This is a deal breaker if I can’t figure out a way around it. (Luke commented on this yesterday.)
  • It seems the only way to delete the item you’re currently reading is to have focus on the item listing pane rather than on the item detail pane. So if you have a long item that you need to scroll, to go back and delete that item you have to click in the item listing first. Also, the tab key shifts focus from the listing pane to the detail pane, but when the focus is on the detail pane, it won’t move focus back to the listing pane.