Reeder ($2.99), my favourite RSS reader on the iPhone, has been updated with support for a new (at least to me) service called Readability. Readability seems a bit like Instapaper (which Reeder also supports), but is probably much more comparable to Safari’s built-in reader functionality. It’s basically for clearing all the junk off of a page so you can get to reading something right now.
The Readability support is built right into the article view of the app right now, but you don’t activate it through the services pop-up at the bottom of the screen. Instead, you’ll pinch-open of tap on the “R” in the top-right corner and watch as your article refreshes and (hopefully) pulls in the full contents of the article. I tried this out on a few different feeds and saw no point in using Readability on Daring Fireball or Shawn Blanc’s website. Both of these sites tend to write posts as quick commentaries on links, and using Readability ended up actually removing *all* text from the screen (the opposite of what it’s supposed to do).
However, Readability does shine on sites that show partial feeds — like Kotaku or Joystiq — and ultimately save me from having to load up the browser view.
As a last bit, I also wanted to mention how well the full screen image viewing is executed. The pinch-out gesture might be just a bit cumbersome on the relatively small thumbnails, but the detailed fullscreen mode shows you a description, a close button, and even an option to save a photo to your library. Very slick.
Continue reading:
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TAGS: reeder, rss app
