Apparus

Subpug Keyboard Shortcuts

We want to make Subpug the best place for you to read the news you care about. One way we’re hoping to do this is by giving you more control, not only over what you read (for example, using subscription keyword filters), but also how you interact with the interface.

To that end, we’ve implemented a number of keyboard shortcuts.

• j - next post
• k - previous post
• [space] - smart scroll: scroll to next post or 60% of page, whichever is smaller
• n - next page of comments
• m - previous page of comments
• r - refresh posts
• o - open a post (when in List View)
• f - toggle fullscreen mode
• h - show the help screen
• 1 through 6 - the social share buttons for the current post (1=Twitter, etc)

Follow @subpug on Twitter for the latest updates and news.

Subpug update #2

Over the last week we’ve made a number of improvements to Subpug for your reading pleasure:

• Faster and more robust subscription loading.
• Improved mobile experience for iPhone and Android, including design tweaks (now defaults to summary view) and the addition of the subscription selector and the ‘Show only read’ button.
• Smoother scrolling between posts.
• You can now use the space bar to “Smart Scroll”. This will scroll the page by 60% or to the next item, whichever is closest. (You can still also use the j/k keys to navigate to the next/prev post).

Woof woof!

Subpug update

Based on your feedback from the last week, we’ve just made some improvements to Subpug, including:

• Improved read/unread functionality, with a mark all read button.
• The number of unread items is now displayed in the subscription drop-down and in the page title (browser tab).
• The current subscription is now displayed in the page title (browser tab).
• Moving between subscriptions is quicker.
• A progress bar now shows the progress of subscriptions being loaded.
• Subscription loading has been improved to better handle errors.
• Instapaper support.

Woof!

Some things you may not notice about the Subpug design

Although we’ve tried to introduce some big, bold features to Subpug - frictionless sign-in, integrated comments, curated feeds - we also like to take pride in smaller design decisions that often go unnoticed. Here are some of the more subtle things about the Subpug design:

1. You won’t see a single word wrap in the title

Akin to widows and orphans, we find single word wraps ugly. So we’ve tried to prevent them in Subpug post titles. In the image above, notice how there’s enough room in the top line for the “a” of “a bride”, but instead it wraps down to the second line to prevent “bride” from sitting by itself.

2. We try to fix wrapping text around images

We love Boing Boing, but their posts format horribly in Google Reader - most often due to text wrapping down a thin column next to a large image. We try to prevent this in Subpug.

3. We hide broken images

Some feeds don’t include the correct paths to embedded images. If these aren’t easy to fix, we try to hide the broken image.

4. We try to remove embedded social uglification

One of our design goals was to remove the amount of visual noise - especially ‘vertical’ noise between posts. A number of publishers use Feedburner FeedFlare to add ugly social links into their posts. Part of our mission is to integrate social functions more deeply into the reading platform (outside of individual posts), so we try to remove these ugly embedded links to make reading more enjoyable, while still offering most of the comparable functionality in the surrounding interface.

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We will continue to add subtle tweaks to make your reading experience more enjoyable, efficient and knowledgable.

Why doesn’t Subpug have a sign-up form?

About half way through the development of Subpug, we decided to scrap the sign-up and sign-in forms. We were trying to create a lightweight service, and the idea of signing up felt wrong; too intrusive for an app that doesn’t store personal or sensitive information.

One of the main reasons why users need to identify themselves to online services (with a username and password) is so that the application can locate their specific data on the server. To work around this requirement, we decided to store all user information in the browser. Although there are some edge cases where this doesn’t work (for example, shared computers), we felt the trade-off was worth it for the ‘frictionless’ use of the app.

Subpug users don’t even need to give us their email addresses - just click through to the app and your “account” is automatically created inside your web browser. If you need to view your data (subscriptions) on another device (like an iPad), Subpug can synchronise your subscriptions back to the server and email you a link that provides access to those subscriptions on another device.

But if you don’t need to synchronize your subscriptions across devices, Subpug is entirely anonymous - we don’t know who you are or what you subscribe to. It’s almost like using a native software package on your computer. In an age where every website seems to be asking for more information, we thought it was refreshing to create an app that tries to know as little about you as possible.

The benefit for us, of course, is that it’s incredibly easy for people to try Subpug. For most web applications, a standard conversion rate - the percentage of people who sign up for a trial after visiting the website - is around 10%. Subpug only soft launched a few days ago, but we’re already seeing a conversion rate of 47%.

That’s massive. About half of the people who visit the website actually go on to use the service. Of course, we don’t yet have enough data to know how many stick around, but a 5x improvement on conversion rates should tempt others to try a similar lightweight sign-up system. If browser-based storage isn’t right for an app you’re creating, check out Mozilla’s excellent new lightweight BrowserId technology, which we’re also considering.

Subpug iPad design

While the iPad wasn’t the primary device that we designed Subpug for, we wanted to optimize the iOS experience and make the design respond to the iPad and iPhone screen resolutions.

We made a few tweaks inside the main ‘reader’ part of the app to accomodate these devices, but one of our most interesting design tactics is on the marketing website part of Subpug. The fixed format (size) of the iPad allows us to design the website so that it feels natural inside the iPad browser.

In portrait mode, the website fits perfectly into a single screen, without zooming.

In landscape mode, the website is divided almost equally into two parts with separate functions. The top half provides the ‘marketing’ function, with an arrow to guide the eye downwards.

Scroll down, and the second half reveals a ‘subscribe’ function to get you into the app.