There have been several recent updates to Wire focused on making the app more responsive and easier to use.

The original goal of Wire was to build an RSS reader that renders content in the format of the website, instead of a stylized view of the text. The whole idea is that a website is more than just what’s in the <content:encoded> tags in an RSS feed, but the CSS and JavaScript that browsers render as well.

There are downsides of loading the URL of an article in a web view though — namely, the overhead of downloading the article and then rendering it. On a fast connection, it’s noticeable. On a slow connection, it can be annoying.

To that end, the last couple of releases have been focused on improving that aspect of the experience. As of version 1.4, Wire downloads every article, which improves performance and makes offline viewing possible. As of version 1.5, articles are pre-rendered to make the transition from the article list to the web view as fast as if we were just rendering displaying the text from the RSS feed.

I’ve been using this for a couple weeks and the more responsive feels like magic.