Google Reader Style: Clean, Minimalist and Readable

Updated July 31, 2009:

I have changed the style slightly. Before, it narrowed the reading area to 45 em. This made text very pleasant to read as the eye didn’t have to move left to right as much.

However, it required readers to scroll horizontally when pictures were in a post, which made reading picture-heavy blog posts (and especially comic strips) annoying.

The 45 em attribute has been removed, and now the width fills the viewing area.

Here’s a redesign of Google Reader I made called “Google Reader – Clean, Minimalist and Readable.”

Google Reader - Clean Minimalist and Readable

Like the design of this blog, the goal was to make something that used a cleaner style with larger fonts, a narrower reading column and more whitespace.

Many of the icons and background colors have been removed and the font is “Georgia.” and the reading column is narrowed to 45 em, a width much easier on the eyes.

It was inspired by the Readability project.

To apply the redesign, you must use Mozilla Firefox with the Stylish add-on. The browser, add-on and style are all free downloads.

I would love to hear feedback, so please leave a comment below!