Google Reader is one service that I keep constantly open in a tab in my browser. And a lot of wishes about it have just come true. The new improvements were announced a day ago but it’s only now that Google has finally given me an opportunity to try it out. In any case, I’m loving each and everyone of them. Especially the search option. Now here’s a list of improvements that Google has graciously added to Reader.

Search. No more need to shift to working offline for that Greasemonkey script and Google Gears tandem to work. You can now search all your feeds with options to search within everything, a specific folder, and even a specific feed. You get results sorted by date.

Collapsible Sidebar. The interface now sports a button that lets you collapse the sidebar for a wider reading area. You can simply use the keyboard shortcut u to do this.

Unread Feed Indicator. I was getting used to see 100+ on each of my folder tags since I have a lot of feed subscriptions. But I was amazed to see that I now see an extra digit added to the bunch. The threshold now is the magic thousand. So if your folder or subscription has less than a thousand unread items expect to see exactly how many these are.