Honestly this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often. I subscribed to the FOFRedux mailing list and started talking interface design. Shortly after joining the list Joe Shaw gave this scathing review of the application:

I didn't even try this. It has the scariest user-interface I've ever seen in a feed reader. I'm a hacker, but these days I just don't want to deal with complicated software anymore.

See the problem with Joe is that he lacks vision ;) . I know a diamond in the rough when I see one. After all if I was quick to judge then I wouldn’t be using WordPress. However he is right in some ways. Traditionally open source applications are seriously FUGLY. It’s mainly due to the fact that coders don’t really care for what something looks like. So long as it works. Here is a screenshot of the current application in use:

Today I decided to sit down and have a crack at redesigning the interface. Now based on previous experience, this sort of thing takes months. I’ve been dealing with Shuttle for over a year and a half. Even though we’re getting closer it’s been very tough to keep the motivation of everyone in the group up. I’m going to see it through no matter what. I decided to play around with FOFRedux because I really want a good RSS aggregator that sits on my server and because I needed a bit of a break from Shuttle.

4 hours is all it took to come up with a design that I’m pretty happy with. That’s it. Sure there are several elements that could use some work but this is my first stab at it. I’ve never used the famfamfam icons in any of my projects so that scratches an itch I’ve had for a while. Here’s a screen shot of version 0.3 of the redesign:

You can see a larger version of that image right here.

So if you think you can or want to help out, do join the mailing list as this is going to be something you will be using in the near future.