Slashdot Mirror
Google Flips Back to Groups Beta (Again)
afabbro writes "Google backed off its beta of Google Groups within 24 hours of making it mandatory for all users. You may recall that its lack of features (date searches), unwanted features (e-mail masking), and clunky user interface met with a very chilly reception here. Unfortunately, as of December 5th, Google Groups Beta is back and you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore. Be sure to share your opinion with Google."
... date limited searches are back on the "Advanced Search" page! Woohoo! That was the show stopper for me. Other than that, its nearly all cosmetic changes, and I don't care about those.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
- groups.google.com goes to the original interface, not to the beta.
- Following a link to the beta shows that you can now easily search a date range.
Not that Hemos could have, you know, looked before posting this...What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
You can get close to the old format.
Click on a group, then at the top of the messages, click on 'Viewing titles only'. This removes all the text and gives you just a listing of all message titles.
Now insides of a message goto the top, and just above first message you will see a link of 'view as tree'. It still is missing the previous,next links at the bottom. Also it does not have that bar along the side of the tree showing you which messages are in the other frame.
If you read it, it looks like they are really aiming it at the LCD, with key segments like:
Then again, most press releases are written with their intended audience being 6-year olds. "Ford Motor Company Inc. makes cars! Vroom vrooom! Beep beep! Ford cars!"
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
For one thing, it breaks PGP signatures. May be minor, but it *can* be irritating.
Unfortunately, as of December 5th, Google Groups Beta is back and you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore. just visit any regional Google Groups, like groups.google.ch and you can still use the old interface.
On occasion, it can be very useful to try and contact somebody that had a similar problem, but a while ago. (ie, the thread is long since inactive)
And I doubt that hiding those emails will have much practical impact on getting less spam. (people often use NOSPAM type emails anyway)
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
These changes have completely fscked up links to usenet posts. A web page I know of that documents a lawsuit (won't post here since I don't want it to get slashdotted) provided links to relevant usenet posts. It now points instead to completely different unrelated posts in other newsgroups.
a n_638071147 used to point to a post in news.admin.net-abuse.email. It now redirects for me to http://groups-beta.google.com/group/it.discussioni .auto/browse_thread/thread/dadced92c14aee94?ic=1 which points to an article in it.discussioni.auto. So Google seems to think there's some sort of correlation between news.admin.net-abuse.email and Italian car discussions???
For example, the link http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&ic=1&selm=
This probably isn't enough for a story, but Google finally has translation support for Eastern languages... I've tested Japanese, Chinese and Korean. They seem to be a lot like Systran's (babelfish) translations, but not exactly.
You may mod me offtopic now.
If you don't like the new itnerface, just use it with a country code domain rather than .com. I've checked the UK, Canadian, French, German, and Australian versions, and all have the classic interface, rather than the new one.
You can subscribe to Usenet groups and get all the postings to your email address.
There's an Atom feed file for every group.
The about page for each group has group archives available by year and month.
I think once (if) I get used to the new interface this new Google Groups could be very nice indeed.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I was wondering what the original post and this one was talking about until I realised that I am in canada and am automatically redirected to the google.ca page. groups.google.ca still has the old interface
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
Are you blind or did Google just add back the features you claim they have done away with?
http://groups-beta.google.com/advanced_search
My lame blog.
Perhaps there is some confusion over the fact that the link "Groups" from the main Google pages now points at the beta. However if one goes to "groups.google.com" directly, you see the same old interface and merely a link inviting you to try the beta if you like.
I happen to have been doing some research all last week and this weekend on groups.google.com and have not noticed any strange changes at all. Sounds to me like they just changed a link on their front page to drive traffic to the beta, big deal?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
However, the deep link you get now is a Google article number, similar to the DejaNews article numbers -- which no longer work of course. The old Google deep links encoded the MsgID directly in the URL, thus guarateeing their usefulness in the future.
> > Usenet is public domain
> No. It isn't. Nothing is public domain unless put there by its copyright holder,
> or by the expiry of its copyright.
While its true the posts are not public domain, and technically are copyrighted, the authors already granted permission for the usenet network to reproduce the messages and distribute them to usenet clients, simply by willingly posting them.
So google, acting as a usenet carrier/server, has the permission to do this.
Additionally, as long as the people using clients do not reproduce the works outside of usenet, they have the right to obtain and archive the messages as well already (copyright never prevented that)
So google could even charge for this service legally.
I'm glad they choose not to though.
OK, before anyone else posts ill-informed rubbish, please go back and read the previous thread, where this argument was done to death. For those who can't be bothered, here's the executive summary:
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, you can revoke that permissiona and request that Google remove your posts from the archive.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The fact that you couldn't imagine in 1987 that anyone running a new server would ever be able to afford enough storage to keep all of USENET available does not constitute an expectation that your articles would be available for a limited time.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
... http://groups-beta.google.com/advanced_search it's just right there at the bottom of the form. So for me all this whining around is quite senseless. Without this date-search, google groups would indeed be completely useless (who is interested in answers to tech-questions asked around 1990?) Philip
When you reply to a post it gives you the option to e-mail that person.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
You can see the email address in Google Groups if you click on the 'Reply to Author' link.
Well, I see that you have Lynx in your name. I am using Lynx right now. The new google groups uses so much Javascript that Lynx can't be used to view it at all. GOOGLE HATES BLIND PEOPLE!
Just curious if anyone feels the same -
:)
-----
I'm just writing to express complete dissatisfaction with new 'improved' user interface. I realize that UI design is very subjective subject prone to lengthy flames, still I believe it wouldn't hurt to provide the feedback from the masses
Few things that are immediately annoying are an overuse of color, stupid star icons all over the place and no obvious way to get a threaded view of a topic. It starts to look like Lotus Notes - fancy-shmancy for no reason.
'Signin/Join' dialog takes too much real estate on the page and it makes me feel pushed into subsribing at something that I don't care about. I DON'T feel a need to login, so there's no need to remind me on every page that I still have that option. Simple 'login' link in corner of the page would've done it just fine.
'Create new group' option also seems out of place, since I don't perceive it as something that I would use frequently if ever. The same goes for 'About' link.
I guess it can be summed up as this - the interface now is 30% of water and 70% of information, whereas it used to be 10%/90%. And this distracts and annoys a lot. From a first (and second) glance, it's a change for worse, and definetly not for better.
...its lack of features (date searches)...
l =en) appears to have date searches. Or was the previous date searching better?
Advanced Groups Search (http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?h
Don't know if you noticed, but /. ate the email addresses you tried to embed inside angle brackets in your post.
You are blind. Click 'view tree' inside the message to get the threaded view. You only need to do this once since it's remembered in a cookie.
Finally, the "old" interface is still very much available. It's at http://groups.google.com
Incorrect. Try to go anywhere from there and you just end up with the new interface anyway.
The first page looks like the original but if you search you are in the new interface - no choice.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating