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iGoogle Users Irate About Portal's Changes
bhhenry sends in an InformationWeek report on a recent unannounced change in the iGoogle portal. Quoting: "Google insists that its revised iGoogle personalized home page generates better 'happiness metrics' than the old design, but a vocal group of users isn't happy about the changes." The recent change introduces what Google refers to as "canvas view," which the Official Google Blog claims "... makes iGoogle a more useful homepage and a better platform for developers." Unlike the last major change made to Gmail, there is no option to revert to the old version of iGoogle. iGoogle users are reporting that widgets and themes are broken, Gmail attachments don't work, and valuable screen space is wasted. The Personalizing Google section of Google Groups is full of thousands of complaints about this sudden and unannounced change. Many posters have have stated that they are using the Canadian or UK version of iGoogle or even moving to NetVibes.com to get their preferred layout back. It seems that Google and Yahoo are moving in lockstep in springing forced changes that users hate.
...news at 11.
Welcome to the future of cloud computing. This is what it means to give up control of your software for the convenience of a net-based service.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'd agree for a lot of things (facebook, flickr), but for google the change really blows. Moving the previously optional tabs from the top to the left creates a huge empty gap on the iGoogle page, reducing the amount of space to work in. The new applications hijack your homepage - I can no longer middle click to open things I want to see later into the background, because they've been AJAX'd (the new hijacked?). Some of the apps I used to use are broken by the change, and I'm not given any option of removing the parts I really don't need.
It used to be that I could aggregate a large amount of relevant information into a small space using iGoogle. Now it's a larger space (due to the extra column of waste) with an interface that's less conducive to picking out those pieces of information I want to expound upon.
I'm sure that I'll eventually get used to it (or move to a different portal), but the change was abrupt and unwelcome, because it broke a fundamental use flow that I'd found quite productive.
Well, actually it did add something: the widgets on each tab can be listed, tree style, by clicking on the "+" next to the tab name, which shows why the tabs were moved to the left.
So, it's not a pointless exercise by any means. As you point out, if you don't have many widgets to manage, then it's a waste of space. The flip side is that the more widgets you have to manage, the better this layout is relative to the old one.
The change was a bit disorienting, for a few seconds at least until I realized that I was still on the portal rather than in some changed version of gmail.
With respect to resizing after you visit some kind of wide format unfriendly site -- well, maybe that's a problem, but I'm not sure it's iGoogle's. The format works fine for working with portal widgets, maybe not so good when you launch a site that is designed for 800x600 displays.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Log-in to iGoogle through www.google.co.uk and enjoy...at least until Google forces the new layout on UK users.
The new sidebar, weather gadget, and Gmail preview take up too much space, even on my 24'' monitor.
I'm not a fan of the change because I do not use the tabs. Instead of complaining, I created a greasemonkey script to remove the tabs.
The new applications hijack your homepage - I can no longer middle click to open things I want to see later into the background, because they've been AJAX'd (the new hijacked?).
When I was a pre-beta tester (or whatever) a couple months ago, I agree, that was broken. Today, using FF 3.0.3 (along with about 15 extension addons) that works along with right clicking. For example I opened this /. story by right click open in new tab off the slashdot rss applet. That did not work a couple months ago. Maybe noscript is saving me or something?
For years I removed or disabled flash to avoid stupid graphic designer mistakes and only recently added flash to watch videos, with the protection of adblock and noscript and friends. Will I now have to find a way to disable ajax to work around stupid designs?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
homepage - I can no longer middle click to open things I want to see later into the background, because they've been AJAX'd
You don't even know what AJAX is, do you?
Asynchronous Java and XML - so instead of just having http links that one can click, there are javascript callbacks that retrieve updated page content without reloading the whole page. While this is nice when you only intend to browse within the single page, or when there are small bits of page that can be updated without needing an entirely new page, it breaks functionality in cases where you intend to get completely new pages.
To your sibling (vlm): I mean for things like weather (can no longer middle click as it just brings you back to the ig page), gmail (only one email at a time, no more opening a bunch in tabs), calendar (can't open upcoming appointments with middle click), etc. These used to be standard links, but have been replaced with ajax callbacks that load up the respective iGoogle page.
Assuming that you are running a browser that works with greasemonkey, you just need to install Rockmaster's iGoogle Sidebar Collapse - http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30414 And you can make it go away or come back whenever you want it.
Asynchronous Javascript and XML.
I might as well point out that I've been on the new iGoogle since very early 2008.
And Google announced, over a year ago, that these changes will be happening. Just because something wasn't reported, doesn't make it fact.
While some of that is true, there's one important difference here. Gmail does NOT work properly with the new interface. It doesn't load the links for attachments and a few other features. It's broken. Change is one thing, but broken is quite different.
.co.uk interface, Gmail is useless for me in the .com one. I only found out about the .co.uk one by reading this article (thanks, submitter).
I'm one who has now switched to the
Aside from that, the tabs on the left hand side is, indeed, stupid. It does totally waste space, as well as being disconcerting -- browser tabs at top, gmail tabs at side. It's better on a widescreen, but on my laptop it's just a waste. There's no point in using this any more.
You should use my copy of Firefox: for some reason on my laptop I don't see these changes, but on my desktop I do.
I like the changes. I want to get it consistent. I'm baffled as to why one computer gets the changes while the other with the same browser does not.
Go to http://www.google.com.au/ig For now anyway...
I switched to protopage.com It took about half an hour to setup, but it works pretty good. It might be a good substitute for anybody looking for something that's like the old iGoogle.
Gah!!! This Stylish script does more damage to the UI than the canvas
"upgrade". Use <a href="http://userstyles.org/styles/11351">
http://userstyles.org/styles/11351</a> for a simple fix of the
horizontal tabs.
Now, if a user wishes to pay a fee and become a customer, then there may be a basis to say that the service is not up to par. But until that point, the advertisers are the customers, and dsign decisions are a compromise between giving advertisers what they want and making the service barely tolerable to the user so they won't move to a competing free service.
It is really sad. Even people who should know better, like NYT columnist, think that Google has some responsibility to the free users, and that the free user apps are suitable for critical business use. I fear for the world when I hear such naive statements.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Warning: shameless plug. You can fix it with this style: http://userstyles.org/styles/11351 Usable with firefox and either Stylish or Greasemonkey plugins
My religion is better than yours is.
This Adblock Plus rule will remove the new left tab: google.com#TD(class=leftborder)
If anyone ever thought that Google cared more about its customers than about revenue they are quite gullible. A companies job is to maximize its shareholders wealth last time I checked. Caring about customers may be a part of that, but only so far as it will increase their profits. If Google loses enough users that their ad revenue or whatever goes down because of this, then they will be forced to change back.