Personalized Pages

I’m a big fan of Personalized Pages, which I use to subscribe to feeds from all around the Web, and view them in one single Web page, which is a pretty convenient way to allow me to keep myself updated with recent news.

But when using Firefox 3.0, the Personalized Page service I was currently using, Windows Live Personalized Experience, wouldn’t work nicely. Some of the feeds couldn’t be loaded and I am no longer able to navigate to the various tabs I have.

Thus, I went and tested out the various Personalized Page services like iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes and Pageflakes, to decide which service to migrate to, and these are my thoughts.

iGoogle

Pros:

• Google Reader as RSS reader
• Loads of widgets available
• Able to view feeds contents directly by clicking the + beside the listed titles
• Close integration with other Google services (Gmail, etc)

Cons:

• Ugly GUI
• Unable to customize layout (Fixed number of columns)
• lack of beautiful theme choices
• Search bar taking up loads of screen space, (I can Google stuff with my Web browser)
• adding stuff is troublesome
• No OPML import or export (containing all my feeds)
• Unable to drag and rearrange order of tabs.

My Yahoo!

Next I took a look at My Yahoo, which many claimed to be the best service out there, but have been in Beta for quite some time now.

Pros:

• Beautiful GUI
• customizable layout and themes (with plenty of nice choices)
• adding stuff doesn’t require a page load
• search bar size can be reduced
• plenty of modules available to use.

Cons:

• Unwanted tabs and menus cannot be removed (Yahoo! Home, My Quicklinks, etc)
• unable to drag and rearrange tabs
• couldn’t import OPML (containing all my feeds).

Pageflakes

Then I checked out Pageflakes, another personalized page service. Its built using ASP.NET! Neat!

Pros:

• Summary of most recent post option available for all Flakes (the Web Parts)
• Pagecasting support
• OPML Import
• The design is fully customizable, but for those who are lazy to design their own personalized pages, they also have quite a few solid design choices

Cons:

• Dragging and rearranging Tabs are buggy
• Icon of feeds that use Feedburner…feedburner icon displayed instead of actual icon, its something pretty granular but almost every site is using Feedburner nowadays
• 4×3 view support for Flakes, also multiple images
• Cusomizable only to a certain extent
  • the links in the top right are always dark blue for the black and white built in theme.
  • customizing your own theme doesn’t allow you to customize the Flake logo color
  • Pageflake logo uncustmizable.

Netvibes

Netvibes, another personalized page service, has a pretty robust application, allowing the user flexibility to customize almost every element of the page. Now thats what I call personalization!

Pros:

• OPML Import & Export
• Page management is all placed in the top bar, neat and tidy.
• Has a Firefox add-on
• Customizable header, or even removable

Cons:

• Too many clicks to add a feed (1. Add feed, 2. Click the small clip for the new feed which will generate a preview feed box, 3. Click Add to my page)
• Animation effects sometimes laggy (bugged javacsript)
• Show more details will display for all titles, I want it to display only for the 1st one, just like pageflakes, and it couldn’t.
• Theme design choices are pretty crappy, many make the page unreadable, thus customizing your own theme should be the best way.
• Shows the number of unread posts. I have alot of feeds, so its usual for me to leave out most of them, I don’t like to feel forced to click every link or just mark all posts as read.

Windows Live Personalized Experience

The personalized page service i’m migrating away from.

Pros:

• Great simplicity
• Import & Export OPML
• Very simple and easy to use interface, with very readable font coloring, didn’t even need any form of customization.

Cons:

• Lack of customizability
• Doesn’t support Firefox 3

After taking some time to test out the various personalized page services, I have decided that iGoogle is too ugly to use and My Yahoo! looks great but has too much unwanted links. So only Netvibes and Pageflakes are left in consideration, I’ll try out using both of them. When they finally fix the Windows Live alternative. I might be switching back, if I see the need to.

What about you? Do you use any personalized page service? Do share your thoughts in the comments.