Google recently updated the look and feel for several of their web applications, including Reader (the one I use the most) in a way that I find makes it uglier and less usable. A quick google web search reveals that I’m not alone in this but unlike some of the other apps there’s no way to revert to a “classic” look. The new UI is unnecessarily large, with lots of wasted space, which is especially bad for netbooks, smaller screens and those of us who like making the most of larger screens.
This annoyed enough that I spent some time with SeaMonkey’s DOM Inspector to help trim some of the wasted space. If you’re using Firefox or SeaMonkey, you can add the following rules to your userContent.css file:
@-moz-document url-prefix("http://www.google.com/reader") {
#lhn-add-subscription-section {height: 50px !important;}
#viewer-header {height: 50px !important;}
#sections-header {height: 50px !important;}
#entries.list .entry .collapsed {padding-top: 0 !important;
padding-bottom: 2px !important;} #nav {width: 230px !important;}
#chrome {margin-left: 0 !important;} #entries {padding-right: 0 !important;}
#search {padding-top: 10px !important;}
#top-bar {height: 45px !important;}
}
Tweak as required. I hope someone else out there finds this useful.
