Instapaper Inconsistency
March 3 2009I love Instapaper. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a really easy way to store articles that you come across online so that you can read them at a later date. Super simple, and with a nice iPhone app allowing easy reading on-the-go. Great stuff. Yesterday, Marco rolled out some new updates to Instapaper. Whilst I’d normally welcome any additions to this excellent service, some of these latest changes just don’t make sense.
Here’s how Instapaper used to work. Previously, you had two lists: Unread (all the articles you have yet to read) and Archive. Once you’d read something on your Unread list, it’d be automatically moved to your Archive. If you wanted to pull an item out of your Archive and into your Unread list, you’d simply ‘Mark Unread’ - makes sense, right? It’s the opposite of ‘Mark Read’ (which is essentially what you’re doing when you Archive). If you wanted to remove something permanently, you could delete it from either list (via a ‘delete’ link), and it’d be gone for good.
And here’s how Instapaper works as of today. I’m going to ignore the new ’Starred’ list, as that’s just fine - it makes sense and has no bearing on the issues I have with the other lists. Now, you have two lists: Unread (all the articles you have yet to read) and Deleted. Archive has now become Deleted. So now, once you read an article from your Unread list, it’ll automatically be deleted. Of course, deletion isn’t as scary as it sounds, as the Deleted list is essentially the same as your archive. Although, to me, it does sound scary - ‘archive’ sounds like a nice warm, fluffy place where my read articles are kept nice and safe for me to look at a future date; ‘deleted’ sounds like a temporary could-go-missing-at-any-moment kind of place. Your articles hang around in your Deleted list until you ‘Permanently Delete’ them. If you wanted to pull an item out of your Deleted list and into your Unread list, you click… ‘Mark Unread’. But wait, that’s what we used to click before! How is ‘Mark Unread’ the opposite of ‘Delete’? That does not make sense. Why would a Wookie live on Endor?
My problems with the Instapaper changes, then, are the following:
- Previously, Unread -> Archive -> Delete made sense. One could go back from Archive to Unread with ‘Mark Unread’. But now, Unread -> Deleted -> Permanently Delete does not make sense. One goes back from Deleted to Unread with ‘Mark Unread’. That’s plain inconsistent.
- Why is the archive of old, read articles (because, let’s face it, that’s what it is) called Deleted? The articles that are in there aren’t actually deleted at all. As proof of this, I have the ability to delete them even more from the Deleted list! Should we rename our Tumblr/Blog Archives lists to Deleted too? After all, these entries are also removed from our main view, and can be deleted further.
- Why is the ‘Delete’ link (to move an article to your Deleted list - where it should still be safe) identical to the ‘Permanently Delete’ link (where your article is lost forever) in all but tooltip? Two identical buttons that do very different things. Pretty dangerous, huh? Thankfully, the ‘Permanently Delete’ button does pop up a confirmation dialog to confirm our actions.
An article entry in the Unread list note the cross-in-a-red-box delete button.
An article entry in the Deleted list note the cross-in-a-red-box delete button.
I love Instapaper, and use it every day. I even bought the Pro iPhone app because it’s so darned good. But I’d urge Marco to reconsider these changes. Archive makes far more sense, and is a much happier place for my read articles to live than the wilds of Deleted.