Slashdot Mirror
Google's X Files Vanish
An anonymous reader writes "News.com reports that Google's latest technology experiment paid tribute to Apple Computer, but the Mac OS X-themed version of the search king's Web site was taken down a day after its debut. Though that particular page was taken down, there is a screenshot here displaying how the icons were magnified as the mouse hovered over them."
Apple was planning to sue Google over stealing the Mac look & feel, and Google found out because Apple's lawyers were using Google to search for info.
...as others in many other forums today have, there is, at least at present, absolutely no proof that Apple legal necessarily did anything here. By all accounts, it was a project by an individual Google engineer that a manager liked enough to display publicly via Google Labs. The creator himself said it was the result of "a fun late-night coding jaunt to help me learn Javascript and DHTML." After other Google managers, executives, or legal staff saw it, there is a distinct possibility that Google itself pulled it because of anything from concerns over possible infringement, to the product not being approved by by the proper authorities before public consumption, to internal disagreement about the rollout process to Google Labs.
To those who may be so inclined to immediately blame Apple, I would say: wait until any facts in this particular instance actually support that position.
You can see a working version (minus the images) at the google cache of the page. It is really neat. Sucks that it was taken down.
Not a single post up yet, and yet the site is already slashdotted into oblivion. Wow.
Would that just make the page #0000FF and all text #FFFFFF ?
*grin*
laugh slashdotted already
Is there a screen shot of the screen shot?
Ironically, this is still talked about on the Google's own Blog
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I wonder if them admitting that it was modeled after OS X quickened its demise. Maybe if they kept their mouths shut nobody would have said anything.
Boo - I was playing with that today, and I really loved it. Something like that would be especially cool for my blind friend who uses a computer more than I do, and I'm an SE! I hope that they bring something like that back to help the visually impaired.
Jho
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
Site slashdotted already
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
I want my Google inteface based on Workplace Shell!
In case you have a good use for it, you can find the HTML here:
9 7173&st=40&p=585627099&#entry585627099
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2
http://almostsmart.com
slashdoted is less then 5 minets
The icons that grew as you mouseovered are gone! This is a major step backwards for the web! Next thing you'll be telling me is that the new msn search actually works! Horrors!!!
...would have been a lone picture of a smushed Morley cigarette.
The coolest voice ever.
"a fun late-night coding jaunt to help me learn Javascript and DHTML."
Let's hope his variable naming conventions don't hold true for all of his development work... From source code:
k=document;v=Date;x=false;z=Array;af=Math.floor;ag =RegExp;b=new z(12);s=new z("null","web","images","groups","news","froogle", "local","scholar","video","maps","labs","more");aa =new z(11);ab=10;t=0;u=0;n=0;o=new v();h=5;m=385;c=0;w=x;var title;var firstHoverOccurred=x;m=385;p=0;function d(ac){c=ac;o=new v();setTimeout("gidle()",20);}function e(ac){c=0;w=x;o=new v();setTimeout("gidle()",20);}function ae(){for(var j=1;j35){b[i]-=h;if(b[i]'}else{var y=(c-7)*70+70;title.innerHTML=''+k.getElementById( imagename).alt}}b[c]+=h;p=1;if(b[c]>70){b[c]=70}l+ =b[c];if(l70){b[c]=70}l=m}var g=af(255-255*(b[c]-35)/35);title.style.color="rgb( "+g+","+g+","+g+")";imageElem.width=b[c];imageElem .height=b[c];k.getElementById(imagename).src=s[c]+ ".gif"}m=l;var ad=new v();ab=ad.getTime()-o.getTime();o=ad;t+=ab;u++;n=t /u;h=5;if(u>4){if(n>30){h=10}if(n>60){h=15}if(n>90 ){h=20}}if(p){setTimeout("gidle()",20);p=0}}
The story reads even better in cockney
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
has vanished as well. Actually, I think I do see some smoke.
They seem to have gotten Flexbeta too. Its like some sort of conspiracy - X Files indeed!
http://home.comcast.net/~rymcvpics/googlex.htm
Here is a fully functional mirror of Google X:
http://www.theplaceforitall.com/googlex/
Dashboard Widgets
here and
here
John Susek
There's a mirror here: http://googlex.foxified.info/, from someone in ATM at DSLR.
All your bases... belong to Apple Legal
A working cache of the original site is available over here
You're welcome
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Here's the mirrordot
Non Working Mirror of Page but it has a zip of all the files you need to run it locally, works too so I can still use it as my homepage. http://www.geocities.com/googlexmirror/
I thought that Google had doctored up this obvious territorial infringement on the Mac OS X desktop as a warning shot fired across Apple's bow since Apple is apparently making a big deal out of searching interfaces and algorithms with it's forthcoming Spotlight technology in it's next operating system.
Google Labs is set to launch a screenless mp3 player the size of a cigarette lighter that plays songs in a rando
PHHHHHHHHHHHHTTT!
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Some guy noodling around in his 20% time to profess his love for OS X hardly seems like something the legal department (or any damn department) should concern themselves with.
Then again, I've had a few beers and can imagine the world, with a few minor tweaks, being perfect like that.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
The pseudo dock is neat, I guess, but the really cool thing about googlex is that it has links to several of the latest google sites such as google scholar and google video that are not linked on the google front page.
Apparently, anything put out to the public for google must run through an obfuscator/compressor.
The reasons would obviously be:
a) Bandwidth: All those extra characters (newlines, variable names, etc) can really add up.
b) Security: Competitors can't steal what they can't read.. or can they?
Definately cool, though!
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
Coral cache of the linked image here.
Why all this about Apple's legal department? Google Labs says that sites will be pulled down if they're too intensive on the Google Labs server, and this was a VERY popular layout today. It's quite possible that that is the reason they pulled it down. I doubt Apple would threaten them over something like this.
I saw it when it was active, my reaction was about the same as when I saw the Magnification feature in the real MacOS X dock, "cool, now let me turn that off and never use it again."
Just host the code locally on your drive and bookmark Google to it. Then you can enjoy it as your Google homepage for now on.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
From the google cache page: "Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you." Sure hope Apple didn't yell at them, after such a nice complement. I don't own any Apple products but they seem like a cool, hip, and forgiving company. This would change my perspective of them, much like when Google went after XGoogle.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
I should add that Apple *does* have Sherlock but that's been around for years...
I'm merely expressing my opinion that Apple is a particularly stupid company for stopping a website from paying homage to their product. It's not like they are:
a. taking away any potential earnings
b. using the same technology: that is, Google is a website and Apple's theme is a Window Manager
c. It's has elements of transformation of Apple's idea - that is the webpage design was a way of navigating Google and not the traditional means of navigating an operating system.
If anything, this should be allowed under fair use laws in the United States. The only thing not going for it is that Google is not a non-profit organisation.
Anyway, my original point stands: Apple sucks for doing this.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Don't forget that the author of the popular Windows application 'Y'z Dock' (simulates OS X's dock) was forced to cease development and remove the app from his site.
With all the suing coming from Apple there is every reason to believe Apple is involved in Google taking this down.
I did the same thing by accident years ago when I resized the icons on a web page I was working on, but forgot to resize the mouseover images.
Mod me down, do whatever you want, just because I'm not impressed every time Google jumps.
Part of the goodness of Google is how simple it is.
I'm sorry but I don't associate a compass with local searches, The word Local is much better, I can read 10 links in the same time it takes to move the mouse over 1 icon to figure out what it does.
It's just a script-trick. Yes it's fun, yes it's good looking, no it's not accessable or bandwidth friendly. It's not even that well coded.
This is just another stupid trick but because it's Google it gets press attention?
Frankly, that's kind of silly. There are a lot more cutting edge things floating around out there than images that resize when you roll over them.
This sounds vaguely familiar...
Slow news day, eh?
It was very cute, though. Even funnier was how people who've never used OS X had a reaction akin to: "Uhm, so what?"
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Before there were mirrors I created my own version of Google X using a script I found. It works more like an actual OSX dock because the images gradually get bigger as you move through them all.
http://shiwej.com/googlex/
JasonBlogs
function grow() {;
ht = ht + increment;
document.getElementById("image0").style.height=ht
if (ht < ht_max) {
setTimeout("grow()",50);
}
I suggest you read Slashdot
I was able to get a full working mirror before it went down, it can be found here:
http://www.eaglescrag.net/Googlex/
1) Use Code 2) Create Pictures 3) . . . 4) Prof. . . er. . . Get sued?
Of course I am trolling. It's not been up long enough for google to cache it.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Hah, I like how they used a bitmap for the screenshot. ;-p
http://www.flexbeta.net/images/googlex2.bmp
It's flamebait becauas you're jumping to an unjustified conclusion. There's no evidence that anyone from Apple was involved in the takedown. Yes, sometimes it seems Apple sues everything in sight, but to say that "Apple sucks for doing this" is not warranted at this juncture.
I spotted the link to this story not long ago when looking at the article for MS dropping VB6 support. I considered submitting the article anonymously just to make Slashdot even more Google-centric (I never got around to getting an account) but was too lazy to bother.
At least, I thought I was. It looks like I must have gone ahead and done it after all.
Go me!
Sorry to break it to yall, but this really isn't that remarkable of a web app. If they had done it like Apple does, maybe it would be better. Someone needs to do it using the distance between the mouse and the image, instead of just a simple mouseover.
The Google Blog gives some more info on where Google X came from. They haven't pulled the post yet or added an explanation for it's disappearance.
I am faimilar with this user. He (or she) is very arrogant and has problem understanding basic logic. The person supports censorship of unpopular ideas as well.
The moderation for this post is very correct and justified. Its really funny when he/she whines about articles he/she doesn't like and demands deletion but moans about being modded down!
Only hillbillies sit around thinking of ways to catch flies.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Seems like someone is in for a surprise when they open their inbox tomorrow...
I attended a lecture by Peter Norvig, old-school AI researcher and now director of Google's search quality. He mentioned that occasionally they will try some new feature out by randomly showing it to 1% of their visitors, or showing it for a couple minutes, and seeing whether they get any positive or negative feedback. It seems like a pretty good idea. Between that and the nofollow attribute, they have a lot of very good out-of-left-field solutions to what could otherwise be viewed as *huge* CS/HI/business problems.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
Steve Jobs: What is on the agenda today?
Secretary: Well sir, while you were sleeping a Google employee wrote 9 lines of JavaScript and made a blog entry, which because everytime Google farts the world sniffs.., spead around the world through other blogs as world changing. However, because it linked to an external site Google took it down without explination cause they are all "mysterious" and better than other companies, and then someone said you did it on Slashdot and now we have a mob with pitch forks and torches outside 1 Inifinite Loop.
Steve Jobs: Pitch forks already? I haven't had my coffee yet!
There is a rage in me to defy the order of the stars, despite their pretty patterns.
Doesn't this prove that Google is writing it's own OS?
The dock theme for swiki (squeak wiki) also does this. It isn't quite as good, but it is a nice demo (more readable javascript).
You really fail it today.
Why is this post offtopic?
Oh.. You fucking failure.
Did you notice that Apple has been legally aggressive for the last couple of years? Before that time, when any company sue someone, the reputation would be at stake...
But not today. Since Apple has already brainwashed all of us, they now have the freedom to do anything they wanted without the whole world booing at them.
Apple: Buy the new iPod, it's $50 off.
Us: Y e s , m a s t e r . A r e t h o s e i P o d s o c k s o n s a l e t o o ?
Orwells was right. Too bad he was off by only 21 years.
Just seeing the mirrors, it appears to me that, away from all these 'supposed' legal considerations, the amount of bandwith used by the google front page could be quite twice as big than now! It's not a little deal, when you have such a site...
Does anyone else think that Apple suing (or threatening to) Google over this is going a little too far? I mean, the on-mouse-over-magnification thing is just like re-inventing the mouse -- it was bound to happen sooner or later and just because Apple included it into its OS X dock, it became really popular. Frankly, I think Microsoft should sue Apple because they have a close button on all of their "windows."
The screenshot is down, and I get:
There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working.
An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.
I wonder... is this thing really sending an e-mail to the administrator each time someone visits the Slashdotted image? If so... I feel sorry for both the administrator and the mailserver.
Come to think of it, this may be the first time I've heard of a double-Slashdotting from a single story.
Now, to get on topic enough that I'm not modded into oblivion...
It's nifty that Google did this and all, but why not take advantage of the features of other operating systems? Windows XP (and maybe 2000? I can't remember) allows for semi-transparent windows; is there anything in HTML or CSS that could somehow take advantage of this? What about a Google site that does something funky using XUL in Firefox?
Personally, I love seeing all the stuff Google Labs puts out, and I look forward to whatever else they might have.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Very cool. I wish I had moderator points.
You win the award for First Ever Comcast-hosted Personal Page That Actually Works!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Funny how you've just jumped to conclusions also.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
the site can kind of be seen at: http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:HaRYQqPANzcJ: labs.google.com/googlex/+&hl=en
I unfortunately already jumped to these conclusions. Apparently, this is because I contributed to Wikipedia. Silly me!
But the parent is correct. I'm now sort of sorry I jumped to those conclusions without proof.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
google tends to rely on the text based approach for sub.sections. which is ok, but having simple art icons, that if well done, can only be a cool thing for the user.
.apple calls a simple magnification of images upon rolloevers theirs, thats just lame... we all call it 'dock' effect now... its totally public domain
but if
... well, I sure as hell don't know you. Perhaps I blocked you on Wikipedia? I wouldn't know because you're posting anonymously! And umm... perhaps you have problems parsing text but I didn't ever ask for this to be deleted. I merely jumped to the wrong conclusion, and asked why I was marked down as flamebait.
Anyway, this is a moot point now anyway, as I've seen the error on what I wrote and stand corrected.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Apple threatened Google? Where did you read this???
I am a fairly stupid person. It helps me get through the day sometimes. What more can I say? Did you actually want me to agree with you? This is my last reply to an anonymous coward.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
One who refuses to fully admit his own mistake but instead tries to spread blame on others in shame.
thank god my site doesnt get mentioned on /. .
the only sites to withstand the attacks are google and neowin.net who shall be /.ed with in time
muhahahah
see http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigat ion.html/
http://terminus.litz.org/googlex.tgz
The truth is out there. Or here: http://68.7.205.246:9500/googlex/Google.htm
IHBT. IHL. Argh!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Look, Apple and Google are buddy-buddy with each other. They are seriously 15 minutes away from each other. Google buys custom Google-logo engraved iPods from Apple to give to their employees.
If anything, I can see Steve Jobs driving allll the way over from Cupertino to Mountain View, and giving that engineer a Mac Mini just for coolness factor. And if good ol Jobs complains, then he'll just get an ass-whoopin.
I've admitted I'm wrong (I can't beleive I'm replying to this), but if you think I've blamed my own stupidity on someone else then put up or shut up: post a link to where I did this and I'll publicly apologise to that person. Sound fair?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I've looked at the example page of how this functions and it looks like norhing more than a couple obvious lines of CSS would make this happen. I've had buttons that got bigger when hovered over before and usually found it more annoying than useful after the initial gee-whiz factor wears off. The closest I get on any of my current stylesheets, I think, is making my buttons move slightly as hovered over but it's largely the same kind of CSS effect.
:)
Who knew that a couple lines of CSS could be so impressive.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
1) Slashdot loves Apple.
h tml if you are curious).
/. news worthy. However, I'm not one that makes those kind of decisions.
2) Slashdot loves Google.
3) It looks kinda nifty.
4) It's not something most people expect HTML to be able to do.
I mean your same criticims apply to the actual dock. Tog (Bruce Tognazzini, founder of the orignal Apple Human Interface Group) did a writeup on the dock and complained about it as being a nice tech demo but not good for usability. One of the reasons was no labels on icons (http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.
However, seems clear in the case of Google it was just a tech demo. Some guy showing off some nifty stuff with DHTML. Doesn't look like Google was at all serious about actually using it as theri new interface. They've long maintaned a very simple, clean, compatible interface and this would break from that.
But ya, neat though it is, not sure it's front page
If anything, Apple is even more uptight about this sort of thing.
Google X was one of those ad-hoc projects that Google encourages its employees to get into. Which results in cool stuff, but also stuff that should have been run by the lawyers first.
What essentially GoogleX was, for those who missed it yesterday, were icons that changed when you pointed your mouse over them. You cant copyright that. My guess is that Google dosnt want apple-google copycat controversy. Google wants a clean and nice image.
Be Gentle
GoogleX screenie from yesterday. Icons grow when your mouse hovers above. Looks like it could be done with only CSS extensions... but i digress. Take it easy on my server /. haha
http://hoteats.net/googlex.jpg
I would like to have babies with you.
Actually admitting GoogleX' look and feel is inspired by Mac OS X should have saved their @$$es. By doing so, noone (including Apple) can accuse them of "borowing" the look and feel of OS X and passing it off as their own invention.
If this copy (http://dinkdoink.com/me/googlex/) is identical to the original page, I think Apple missed a free ad on Google(note the text on the bottom of the page - there is a link to Apple's OS X page). Or maybe this is excatly the reason Google took it off?!
There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working.
An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.
I expect their mailserver to issue a similar message soon.
Google and Apple are two companies that can do no wrong in the eyes of Slashdotters; so it's gonna be miiiiighty interesting to see how they manage to support/condemn them at the same time. It'll be fun to see who lines up on one side.
Consider me in Google's corner on this one. And yes, I'm assuming Steve Jobs woke up today and went "I think I'll sue Google. Tribute? HAH! They'll see tribute. Our lawyers will make them PAY! Tribute like 'pay us or get your capital sacked!' ".
Ahh, that Steve Jobs. Not just running a corporation, but changing the world too.
*Put's armor on*
Ok, come on, Apple slaves...do your worst!
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
And should it become known that Apple WAS responsible for this, will you then apologize and say "yup, he was right, Apple does suck for doing this?".
As you yourself noted, Apple has now accumulated a reputation for "suing everone in sight"; isn't that reputation their own fault? And aren't people justified somewhat in suspecting Apple to be at fault here, BECAUSE of that litigious reputation of theirs?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I've got 67 apps in my dock, which I've also located vertically on the right. Magnification actually is helpful for the way I work. OTOH, I've got the genie effect turned off.
My take on GoogleX was similar to yours, though. It was cool as an homage, but does it add anything functional? Or is it just eye candy?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The images on this page only enlarge when the mouse is actually on them. One of the things that makes the OSX dock look so fluid is that the closer the mouse is to an icon, the larger the icon is. It gives a fluid "wave" effect that isn't present here.
http://myhome.iolfree.ie/~frontacsb/quickgoogle/ :-)
cheers
front
Why the hell is this a story?
Especially when there's a far more interesting piece of tech-related news this morning?
D.
..is for Don't Waste My Time!
A bit melodramatic, I think. It's a themed webpage, not the moral compass of the internet. Get over it.
Google has a long history of putting up special Logos for Holidays and special events. This is most probably one of them.
Though they are a bit early this time: "Mac OS X was released on March 24th, 2001".
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
http://www.iamcannabian.com/googlex/ has it! it even has a gmail link check it out!
I think a lot of bad ideas are actually good ideas made to do things they aren't suited for. Rollerskates are a great idea for moving from one end of the neighborhood to another, but pain if what you're spending all your time going up and down the staircase from the first floor to the fifth.
The dock is a great idea for a launcher for a small, fixed handful of applications. It makes efficient use of space, it gives feedback about what you are about to do (when you click, it's the big one that be launched). I can imagine how well the original demos went. It's all the other stuff the dock is forced to do, like tell you about the state of your session, that are a bad idea.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm sorry but I don't like wasting fuel and money, Going somewhere by bike is much better, I can get to work by bike in the same time it takes to get the car one block in those traffic jams.
:)
Well, just as my argument doesn't hold up, if not else, just by the fact that millions of people use the car every day to get to their work makes it apparent that it has some uses, your argument doesn't hold up.
Apparently people did find that feature useful or ingteresting. It spread across blogs and friends quite fast, and it's popularity may even be the reason it got taken down.
What you think is useable and interesting doesn't neccescarily equal to what other people do.
But then, whining about the amount of uninteresting google-news are about as a sure way of getting modded up as flaming apple is to get modded down.
Nowhere is it ever mentioned that Apple had anything to do with it. I hate Apple, so why am I the one standing up for them?
If you ask me, they removed it out of fear of getting slashdotted.
The page deserved to be taken down just for that comment
This is cool looking and all, but it's very simple javascript. I like Google as well, but come on guys. This company can crap in a bag and /. readers all over the world will rejoice.
Here's a working mirror with a gmail link: GoogleX
If (you.BreakIt()){you.AddBadLuck(7)}
I remember a similar feature like this being a part of KDE almost 3 years ago. I am not really a Mac person /* Duck */ so I don't know when OS X was released..
This belong in the 'News no one could care less about' department.
Check it out: http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/03/google-go es-x.html
I found the site earlier yesterday, but when I read the Google Blog last night the link was dead.
.\.\att Clare
Google has never advertised openings for Mac OS X developers. Their Engineering listings contain specific openings for Windows and Senior Windows Developers.
Interestingly, for a company willing to advertise an "homage" to OS X, they don't seem to be in a hurry to hire developers for any Mac OS X hosted client-side solutions (Google Toolbar, Desktop Search).
Trapping an angry mob heading for you in an infinite loop. Very clever! Apple yet again leading the industry in inovation.
As there's cache of the images, anyone with a Web server could run this as their homepage at http://127.0.0.1/
Another thought: the icons could be recycled and used for ObjectDock (http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/) if only the goddamned thing wouldn't crash Explorer.exe so much...
Steve doesn't drink coffee.
Think of it like source code -> compiled code. He still has the source code, this is the compiled version.
There are a number of software conversion packages which strip out uneeded whitespace, comments, reduce the length of variable names down to 1-2 letters, etc, and then cache the results and serve those up instead of the original source. a 40-50% reduction (or more) in number of bytes used; while in no way affecting the ability of the browser to render the contents. And if (as google does) you then use http compression on the content, you can reduce the bandwidth usage for a given file even more.
All without inconveniencing the developer or his coworkers in the least... they still do all their work from the original, clean, well-documented version with descriptive variable names
If everyone had only 6-10 apps in their dock then yes, labels would be better than icons.
I currently have 37 icons in my dock and it's only 10AM. by noon I will probably have 40-50. I have a 23" Cinema Display and could theoretically load up my dock with 115 icons with little decline in actual usability. Text would all start to look the same very quickly.
There is also a difference between usability and learnability (i'm not sure if that is a real word, if not you heard it here first).
It takes some time to learn how to use the OSX dock. But after using it for a while and getting familiar with the placement of icons. It BECOMES very usable. Think about when you are in the supermarket and you are looking down the isles. You don't have to read every package label. You can recognize your favorite cereal box from clear across the store because our brains are great at pattern recognition. The OSX dock plays on this strength.
Here's an early attempt I did a couple of years ago for my very first Flash site. The icons magnify when scrubbing through them, but the dock doesn't grow dynamically when it's moused over (although it does make noise).
Here's a much more robust version that I did last week. There's a lot of functionality that's not being exploited in this version, for design reasons. For example, it can handle drop shadows which get blurrier and move further away from the magnified icon, so it looks more realistically like it's lifting off the page. Also, I can make my dock work just like the now-defunct Google dock just by changing a few variables.
i thought, therefore i was...
The "genie effect" is bad UI design because it makes the "clickable hotspot" for doing something change shape/size and move depending on how you found it.
For instance: on the toolbar, if you start from the left side, and mouse over the growing/shrinking icons, then move *straight up* off the toolbar, you will have left a certain large icon. When it shrinks, you may no longer be directly above that same icon any more, so if you move *straight down* again, you'll land on a different icon.
This is precisely why Apple's "stoplight" maximize/minimize/close buttons appear on the upper-left side of the window title-bar, so if the window resizes while you're getting ready to click one of them, they don't move out from under your feet.
Countelss Windows applications have done this to me, where a dialog box auto-resizes just enough to place the close button where the minimize button used to be. Even Nero used to replace a "Next>" button with a "Close" button in the same spot in their interface, just to make things dicey.
Sure, it's fancy eye-candy, but having deterministic GUI clickable elements I believe is more important.
Since all that has kept and will keep Apple going against cheap PC hardware and Windows (and increasingly Linux) is their public relations I doubt it was worth it. Microsoft can keep going because the average Joe knows only Windows. Apple relies on geeks and professionals for their business - and geeks and professionals tend to read sites like slashdot which expose the litigation-happy Apple.
...has had jump-up icon things like this called "zoomers" for a long while with Object Desktop on Windows. I've used them and if Apple orders them to stop making them availible, you can bet they're going to be torrented. I think it is time for massive rabid peaceful noncompliance via P2P with Apple and other corporations who continue to abuse the word "intellectual" in the phrase "intellectual property" never mind the IP laws.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Free advise: stop riding Steve Job's jock.
They were killed for knowing too much.
The truth is out there...
The source for Google Suggest does not work locally, so I believe it can only be run from google's server. It is basically google.com with the following tacked on to the url: webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Anyone have any idea of how this works?
Steve Jobs: This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
'There is a problem with the database that is preventing the site from working.'
'An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.'
I bet the email simply says 'fucking slashdot...'
I am so sick of all you apple fan boys. Apple innovates, but they have a small niche of the market at best. True, they come out with a great product, but it is priced high. It is by no means a "good deal" - and don't sell me anything about the 256 meg Mac Mini with no screen, mouse, or keyboard at $499. I can get a Dell for the same price that can outperform that shoebox and is shipped with a 15 inch flat screen monitor for the same price.
Apple is suing their own fans and scaring everyone with lawsuits. But let's look at Apple for a minute. They hold all of their cards to their chest. Everyone bitches about M$, but where are all of the other OS's for Apple? Where are all of the options for Macs? Who the hell wants to hack OS X? Hackers generally go to where the public is going. They attack the admittedly-poorly-coded IE6 now because it is the most widely used browser. They will attack Firefox as it gets more popular. No one hacks OS X or "Tiger" or whatever the hell it is called because the masses don't use it.
It seems to me that Apple is the company that has the real monopoly. No one will call them out for their practices because most Mac users are in love with their PC's (oh, I forgot, their Macs). Call me whatever you want, but I will stick with M$ and the Intel/AMD crowd. I don't have to deal with a bunch of fanboys that can't hanlde any criticism of Apple and Steve Jobs.
Speculation (Score:5, Informative)
At last, the perfect one-line description of Slashdot with none of that "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters" nonsense.
Google is preinstalled in Safari and Firefox!
;-)
Y'know, I keep seeing comments like this, but I don't see it in my safari or firefox windows. I opened a clean window for each and poked around, and nowhere could I find a mention of google other than in the history list. I looked through the menus, and the only references to google were in the lists of open windows. I a dug through Preferences, and found no mention of google anywhere.
So where is google "preinstalled" in these browsers?
Am I missing something?
(Quite likely; browsers are complex beasts, and most of their features are undocumented.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Hi,
I mirrored Google X for all those who'd like to try it out or just keep on using it.
http://ablaze.fr/GoogleX.htm
Enjoy !
Ablaze.fr
the funny write-up John Paczkowski gave this story in the good morning silicon valley.com.
/. but beware...if you mention it as a source of a story submission, /. will quash it.
NOTE: lots of good, if not absolutely fresh content show up on GMSV, its my favorite alternative to
Another mirror can be found at http://www.yipiyo.com
I made a FRENCH Google X mirror.. http://evilpig.xtrhost.com/googlex/french.html
http://evilpig.info