A brand new beta version of Bloglines has been launched this week, and it features a great amount of AJAX and customization features.
The key features in this new beta include:
A Customizable Start Page: You can now drag and drop desired pages to your start page so that you can get a quick glance of the stories from your favorite feeds.
When you mouse over a particular title on your feed, you can see an excerpt of the feed or summary.
Three different viewing options: You now can view your feeds in a standard full feed view, which the old Bloglines version is based off. You can also view only headlines in quick feed view, or you can view the feeds in a three-pane view which combines full feeds and quick feeds in a split pane.
Here's the standard full-feed view that most of us are used to:
But here's a quick feed view which looks very similar to the customized start page. However, this is only for a particular folder that I have selected.
This is what it looks like when you opt-in for a 3-pane view. It kind of reminds me of the way I set up my email.
I like it.
Drag and Drop Feeds for Easy Organization. And finally, for someone like me who subscribes to over 180 feeds, a drag and drop feature is available so that I can organize my feeds better. I really needed this and now it's here.
So far, the direction of Bloglines is promising. The only caveat forum members and I have noticed noticed is that it's not easy anymore to mark feeds as read unless you mouseover them or scroll into the blogs. I can see that being an issue that the Ask team will address, however, so let's give it some time. :)
Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.
