How To Remove Clutter From Google Reader with Helvetireader

We’ve supplied quite a few Google Reader (GReader) articles in the past, including Mark’s help with keyboard shortcuts, a set of general tips from Aibek, productivity hints again from Mark, and a set of eight features you might have missed altogether from Abhijeet. But this one is a little different.

What’s that all about?

Just so we’re all on the same page, GReader is a web-based RSS feed reader from Google. If you need to know what any of that means, click the links above. You want to be familiar with RSS and GReader before you try this.

Imagine taking the functionality of GReader, and then rebuilding the visual part of the site. Paring it down, and just leaving what is necessary. It actually takes some getting used to, but once you get there the result is very nice.

Helvetireader is essentially a stack of CSS, packaged in a number of different ways.

Getting your copy

The most likely way you’ll get hold of Helvetireader is by downloading the Greasemonkey script and installing it in Firefox, with Greasemonkey already installed.

You probably don’t need much help with that, but just in case, follow these easy steps:

Take a ride to the Helvetireader site in Firefox (for other browsers, see below), and click on the Install as a userscript option.

Wait for a moment then click the Install button.

Making it work

Refresh your GReader page, and take a look at the differences. That’s it.

Menus

Before

After

Individual feeds

Before

After

Using the result is easy too. Mostly, things are just the same, but you’ll find it’s better to make use of the keyboard shortcuts than the mouse.

Icons for options are sometimes a little less obvious, but the red highlighting in the menus is wonderful.

In the end, it’s more about visual design than functionality for me, but I like it. I’d just like to perhaps see a dark version as well. Photos are my thing, and they generally look better against something other than white.

Other options

If you’re a little more adventurous you can also make use of Helvetireader in other browsers such as Opera, Chrome, Safari and Omniweb. Details at the site again.

Outside my area of expertise, you can also make use of Fluid [Instructions] and Mozilla Prism [Instructions] to turn GReader into a desktop application.

For you low level types, you can also just grab the CSS. The beauty of that is the ability to customise things to get them just the way you want them.

So do you use Google Reader? Is it customised? Are you big on keyboard usage? What add-ons do you use? Let me know in the comments.