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."

Comments

Re:Before anyone jumps to conclusions...

[Breakfast Pants]

The article mentions that Apple has sought patent on the genie effect... I thought the genie effect was an animation Apple used when minimizing/maximizing windows, not the dock magnification effect.

my version

[no1here]

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/

Re:Obfuscated..

[mshaslam]

Not obfuscated, just compressed. I saw it this morning and wanted to learn how it worked so I tabbed it out and changed some of the var names to something more human readable. It only took a few minutes.

...
function gidle(){
var l=0;
for(var i=1;i<b.length;i++){
var imagename="image"+i;
var imageElem=doc.getElementById(imagename);
if(c!=i){
if(b[i]>35){
b[i]-=h;
if(b[i]<=35){
b[i]=35;
imageElem.src=images[i]+"-sm.gif"
}
imageElem.width=b[i];
imageElem.height=b[i];
if(c==0){
var g=floor(255-255*(b[i]-35)/35);
title.style.color="rgb("+g+","+g+","+g+")"
}
p=1
}
l+=b[i]
}
}
...

If someone like me can get the basics this way, you can bet a real coder can follow it without a problem.

MSH

Google Interface

[daniel_mcl]

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.

Re:We all know why

[supachupa]

Sorry I don't have my references at hand, but in Australia there was a famous law suit against a software product and it was decided that you cannot patent or copywrite the 'look and feel' of software.. only the code underneath. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.