A while back, I ranted about how my Bloglines feeds page keeps on making Firefox display that “unresponsive script” warning due to the long time the Javascript takes to process the information–I have about 650+ feeds, not all of which I get to read on a regular basis. I have since then manually lengthened the time the browser waits for scripts to finish (instructions here at LifeHacker), but FireFox still freezes for a while whenever Bloglines refreshes.

Recently, though I noticed that my feeds page seemed to load noticeably faster, even on my slower machines. Looks like Bloglines has been busy optimizing its feed-list pane for speed, with some enhancements, to boot.

You might have noticed a few fancy little changes we’ve made to your feed tree on the left pane today. You’ll like them even more when you learn what’s behind the scenes!

* We no longer update the entire left pane when the unread or “kept as new” counts change. Now the counts update in place with a fading yellow indicator. The result is a faster, more pleasant way to cruise through your feeds, especially for those quick on the hotkeys.

* We’ve decreased the time between automatic updates to your unread counts so you don’t have to press the “r” hotkey quite so often.

I’m not so much into the fancy changes, since what I really do appreciate is the speed improvement. Still, one of the simple changes I find really useful is the new indicator of which feed you’re currently reading.

I still haven’t gotten around to pruning and trimming down my feed list, though.

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