Ok ok! That isn’t quite the heading for a post on a logo design studio blog but it’s definitely relevant for blogging.
I have been an avid user of Bloglines and when Google launched Google Reader, very reluctantly [ what could be better and more functional than Bloglines!? ] decided to try it out. After about more than a month of using Google Reader, I am a permanent convert and do not use Bloglines anymore.
Couple of days back, Google also provided the “Add to Google” button for blogs to use to allow readers to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed directly on Google Reader. In the same regard, I put the buttons [ with some design tweaking ] on this blog [ on the sidebar at right ].
DESIGN TWEAKS
The original button looks like this: 
Since WordPress automatically provides RSS subscription options to blog Entries as well as Comments [ although I’m not sure how many people actually use the Comments RSS feature! ], I needed to design two buttons that allowed direct RSS links as well as a subscription link to Google Reader – and I did not want to design four buttons and thus waste more blog real-estate!
This is the Entries RSS and Google Reader button: 
And this is the Comments RSS and Google Reader button: 
Each button caters to two links [ one for the direct RSS Feed link and the other for the direct subscription link to Google Reader ]. And I thought ImageMaps were pretty much obsolete!
Design isn’t just about making stuff look pretty – it has to be functional too – and just because a particular feature is oft-used and ‘old’, doesn’t mean its utility is lost.
