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Google Give Searchers 'Instant Previews' of Result Pages
First pressing 'Enter' was to much work... now actually clicking on the links and visiting the sites is to much, too... Google is testing instant previews, where you can see a miniature rendered view of the landing page without requiring you to click through and back-arrow.
YAY! Preview-porn is best-porn!
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
And that's to turn off Javascript, which returns it to the original, clean, doesn't-suck-donkey-dick home page with a box to type in the search term and a couple of buttons to click.
Would Google be doing all of this if not for concerns about Bing and such? Competition is normally good, but despite what they claim in my experience Google Instant really seems to slow down my searches. I'm not convinced this will be a real improvement either. Of course everyone seems to think Chrome is great too but it just seems painfully slow to me, so maybe i've just been having bad luck with Google products lately.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The instant search results are a pain for me. They violate my back button expectations and they interfere with my web searching workflow: I may alter my query in preperation for the next iteration while still scanning the page for links to open in new tabs.
It also uses excessive bandwidth by searching for me--and causing the page scrollbar to jump around jarringly--when I am not done typing.
One thing I always liked about Google right from the first is that they're *lightweight* and fast. Clutter free and minimal to the greatest extent possible. I understand with things like the never-ending-image-search and instant results from queries they're trying to compete with the glitz of bing and other so-called competitors, but this seriously hurts the experience for users like me. Please, Google! You don't have to compete on glitz when you have a hands-down superior product!
I want my Cowboyneal
First Google Instant and now this. What's the value in seeing a small thumbail of the page? The text is too small to read anyway and this will only add to the distraction. You can't evaluate a page based on the layout or how it looks. You're usually looking for content when you search.
This space for rent.
I like this feature for a couple reasons. I'm a visual person, I like seeing if the site is the one I remember before I go visit, or if it's a spam-link-farm kind of page that's just wasting my time. I also like their "highlight" that shows WHERE in a page I'll find the sought phrase they snipped.
I also like the Google Flip feature at the bottom of their news page, but I don't like the two-click process to visit the site. Clicking on the preview gives a (useless) bigger preview, and then clicking on that takes you to the showcased page. Without the second preview, it would be a nice little stumbleupon-like way of finding interesting stories/news/ideas around the web.
[
"We know where every word on the web lives,” he said.
So if I use Bing, you might go and rough-up some of my favorite words in retaliation? Please, Google, this web is big enough for the both of us!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Dammit, all I want is simple search. I don't want previews, or weighted results, or guessing what I really meant, or a map and pictures and previews of everything that happens to come up in the list of results. Just give me the damned plain search and the naked results. Stop wasting my time with YOUR idea of what YOU think I wanted.
Oh wait, that should be "What your ADVERTISERS think I wanted". My mistake.
Google got popular because it was SIMPLE and FAST. It's a damned shame there's no competition left that believes in simple search, so now even Google feels free to tell us how WE want to search.
What the search world needs is a reset, back to what Google was like when it was new and still eager to collect more eyeballs, instead of the 800 pound gorilla that dictates how every web page is optimized and which ones we get to see when we go looking for something.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The good thing is, I can see this helping with sandboxing browsers, especially the ones in internet cafes or public labs when you are searching for something and you get bombarded with ads (usually the talking ones when the person before you turned the volume to max) or irrelevant content. However, Google is becoming less and less lightweight. If I wanted things like this I would use "iGoogle" or whatever their portal page is now.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I don't want to see a single new Google technology until they put the Google image search back to the way it used to be before they shitified it. It's so damned annoying to use now that I'm actually using Bing when I want to search images.
I thought Flash was a CPU hog. This 'preview' functionality REALLY bogs down my web browser! I don't want it!
I don't like the feature, on Google, that moves an indicator when I press my arrow keys and lets me (forces me to) select the link with the enter key. I use my arrow keys for scrolling, not for navigation within the embedded HTML. I have a strong feeling I'm not going to like this either.
Remember when Google won us all over with their simplistic no frills search results? Why do people feel the need to fix what is not broken??
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
So, do the ads load up in that miniaturized pages, too? And if so, does that count as a view for that ad? Maybe this is just a way to up their ad revenue.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You know the firefox add on that has been around for probably 5+ years. But hopefully they can take care of the giraffa patent.
I'm holding out for Quantum Google, which displays instantly every single web page that does and could ever exist. That way I'll never need to search for anything ever again!
Virtually serving coffee
I also just want a simple search. ...
Not annoying searches on every key stroke, not hover searches
Simplicity was why google was better than yahoo, infoseek, and alta vista years ago.
I suggested google from the beginning, and now I am looking for a new search engine.
duckduckgo.com looks promising.
Anyone else have suggestions?
I remember clicking the stupid magnifying glass by accident a few weeks ago, towards the end of October. I guess all that extra rendering slowed down the wired writers by about 3 weeks.
Me neither. And I don't like "Google Instant' either.
Know what I do about it?
I turn it off! Just turn it off and forget it was ever implemented.
If someone out there likes this stuff, fine. They can have it. That doesn't mean that the people who don't like it are forced to deal with it.
For anyone looking to compare this to the numerous chrome/firefox plugins that generate thumbnail previews:
This won't generate a request to every website in the search results list. This is very important when surfing from work (and also a good thing for security; those thumbnails have been the cause of a lot of drive-by malware infections).
If memory serves correctly, ask.com has had this feature for ages. http://sp.askkids.com/en/docs/about/binoculars.shtml
How about Startpage Advanced?
https://startpage.com/eng/advanced-search.html
They're making efforts to start protecting your privacy.
DuckDuckGo does indeed look interesting.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The keyboard navigation is a feature of Google Instant. You can disable it by turning off Google Instant (either from search settings or from clicking the "Instant is on" link to the right of the search entry field).
Are Google forgetting how they managed to take number one from AltaVista? Fast, clean and accurate results trumps all.
There is now a link on Google's homepage for you to try out the instant preview feature. Or you can go from here: http://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/
Btw one other nice thing is that you can now use instant preview to easily see how exactly Google's crawler "sees" a web page. (Though yes Google Cache can show it too but is in HTML with broken CSS and images)
Unlike Google Instant, which shuts off on slow web connections, Instant Previews is available to those on thin connections and could be more beneficial to those users than to those using fat pipes, since the question of which page to click and allow to load is far more crucial on dial-up than on a fiber connection
I am skeptical. I guess loading an image is faster than loading the actual page, but if the page is mostly text then the preview would be slower.
I also wonder how well this preview works with Web Accelerator or Opera Turbo. Oftentimes they squash images to the point where they are unintelligible - I wonder if the same would happen with google preview.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What's with all the hate? Lots of sites have a bounce rate between 30 and 50% [citation needed]. If seeing a half-loaded page is enough for 50 to 70% of people to
decide to leave, isn't it reasonable that a preview would be enough too?
I'd have to use it to decide if the interface is more annoying than useful (obviously)... but there's at least potential there. Heck, depending on whether google caches or optimizes the preview, this could reduce wasted bandwidth as well.
It depends on the attack. If you call meth users "rapists" then you deserve a troll mod. If you ask why someone would use Sony products when Sony has a history of abusing their products, you'll get a "troll" mod, but you won't deserve it; it's a valid opinion.
Free Martian Whores!
startpage.com only works in newish browsers, and duckduckgo.com requires CSS and JS. Neither had particularly good results.
So... nix on both of those, at least for me. :(
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"First, pressing Enter was too much work..."
No. Pressing Enter was pointless, and clicking through to the page was pointless. Obviously, if I'm taking the trouble to go to a search engine and type in words, I want to search for them. It's idiotic to have to tell the machine that. Likewise, I don't care about the links, I want the page itself, so it makes sense to pull it up right away.
The whole point of having a machine is to automate repetitive tasks, and that's what Google is doing here.
Rather than bringing up a small screenshot of each site, Google, just give me some personalized filtering options, please.
And it doesn't need to be complicated, it just need a single checkbox/radio button set like this:
[_] Do not filter my results
[X] Delete all results from domain experts-exchange.com
To not get modded troll by mcgrew, just post in a discussion where he is participating ;-)
Users of Sony and Apple products deserve it when DRMs explode in their face. They should know better.
Drug use should be free but should require a license to buy them, just like driving a car. And that would include alcohol and tobacco.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Complaints all around! But how come nobody complained when Bing started doing this months ago with plain text previews? Except visual screenshots is more useful. I, for one, enjoy the preview:
- It will also force people to think about how their sites look as a 200px wide thumbnail, which is a good thing.
- The thumbs also feature legible-size snippets of the keywords found inside the page.
- I can tab through with my arrow keys and see each page without clicking anything.
- And for all you haters, you can just turn the thing off.
Sheesh.
Google took over as the primary search engine because it was lightweight and fast. Now Google is adding bling that will turn it into Yahoo -- a search "portal"... And sooner or later, Google will become slow and bloated in the never-ending competition with Microsoft.
Which of course, means a new company will spring up, with a lightweight and fast search engine. It will be called something funny-sounding at first, and then, when more and more of us start using it, we'll just "_____" for that. Eventually MS and Google will fade away, still clubbing each other over the head, but this new company will start to dominate, until it too, goes public, gets an asswipe as a CEO and completely destroys itself.
And then the web starts all over again. With AOL and Yahoo. Hey, aren't they merging? Spooky!
Maybe we'll see a rise of Pointcast again. Or Beens.com Whatever. As long as it's not MS running the internet. Or Apple. Or Google. Man, I look back on black text on grey background fondly. Now get off my lawn!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
ALT+UP, ALT+DOWN.
or else!
Okay plenty of nerd rage going on here, but how do consumer types feel about the new google page?
I'm not saying it's any good but if the general population likes it more it's here to stay.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I know you jest, but thankfully the history and cache will be showing something like : "google.com/preview/ae7163828.png" instead of "babyfucker.com/gangrape/toddlers.asp" (the preview are actually pictures stored on Google's servers). You can provably explain that the pictures where an instant preview.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In March of this year (2010), I did an image search of the most common English words and visually counted into the list to the first porn image. (For my subjective definition of porn).
My reasoning was that some words are closely associated with prurient intent, and I was wondering if there could be a "distance to porn" defined in conceptual space. For example, "foot" would probably have a large prurient distance, while "head" would be a short distance due to phrases like "giving head" &c.
To my surprise, nearly all common English words are really, *really* close to porn by that measure.
It's 8 months later. I redo the search and see almost nothing which would constitute porn.
I guess they've cleaned up their image search algorithm or something.
Here's the top of original list, from March 2010:
Rank::Word::Dist(Porn)
1 the 88
2 of 47
3 to 65
4 and 24
5 a 35
6 in 22
7 is 48
8 it 53
9 you 40
10 that 28
11 he 39
12 was 21
13 for 64
14 on 21
15 are 78
16 with 27
17 as 23
18 I 22
19 his 21
20 they 31
21 be 53
22 at 21
23 one 32
24 have 57
25 this 33
26 from 36
27 or 24
28 had 62
29 by 21
30 hot 23
31 but 24
32 some 33
33 what 45
34 there 29
35 we 24
36 can 82
37 out 44
38 other 87
39 were 43
40 all 23
I do not know about you, but this "instant off" option requires cookies and I do not browse with cookies enabled by default - that is just asking for trouble!
Cookie Monster
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4703/
Oh God... the summary... oh yes... *bad writing orgasm*
Because the people who invented it are billionaires, and have hundreds if not thousands of wage-hungry peons doing the work, now, and every one of them wants a way to make a name for themselves.
The billionaires at Google still, apparently, have editorial control over that front page, but they're vastly outnumbered by people who have lots of time to come up with arguments that can convince billionaires to spend an uptick in word count.
Regardless, 90% of Google's functions are hidden under that "even more" link which is at the end of the "more" menu that's at the end of the menu bar.
They can be launched by clicking on a magnifying glass icon that shows up to the right of a search result link
Reply to That ||
Great this will benifit my site as it is super cool. you can find it here cougar dating enjoy.
I know 0 meth users, and all 0 of them are rapists. That's 100%! You can't argue with statistics like that, man!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I have specific reasons that does not work for me! is completely missing the point and destroying what made them valuable to me! I choose to ignore that disable or transparently work around because ... sucks for me! People who like obviously don't know what they're doing, and probably have some sort of mental defect that causes them to not see that it sucks!
Personally, I don't mind the instant search. Maybe it's because I have a decent enough computer and connection that it really is nearly instantaneous. I actually find it incredibly impressive that Google can generally return search results and suggestions that match what I wanted before I'm even done typing. I don't know that it's much more useful than the older "type query->submit" method, but it certainly isn't any worse for my usage.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Is learning the uses of the various forms of the various forms of (to two, too)... TOO much work for the submitter?
Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/52498/
Or this bookmarklette:
javascript:var%20f%20%3D%201%3B%0Awhile%20%28%20f%20%29%20%7B%0A%20%20var%20a%20%3D%20document.getElementsByTagName%28%27a%27%29%3B%0A%20%20f%20%3D%200%3B%0A%20%20for%20%28%20var%20i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20a.length%3B%20++i%20%29%20if%20%28%20a%5Bi%5D.href.match%28%27experts-exchange.com%27%29%20%29%20try%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20f%20%3D%201%3B%0A%20%20%20%20var%20p%20%3D%20a%5Bi%5D%3B%0A%20%20%20%20while%20%28%20p%20%21%3D%20null%20%29%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20if%20%28%20p.tagName%20%3D%3D%20%27LI%27%20%29%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20p.parentNode.removeChild%28%20p%20%29%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20break%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%20else%20p%20%3D%20p.parentNode%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20if%20%28%20p%20%3D%3D%20null%20%29%20a%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild%28%20a%5Bi%5D%20%29%3B%0A%20%20%7D%20catch%20%28%20x%20%29%7B%7D%0A%7D%0Avoid%280%29%3B
Paste that in to the FF address bar to eliminate expert exchange search results. Equivalent to this script (esp for use with grease-monkey).
var f = 1;
while ( f ) {
var a = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
f = 0;
for ( var i = 0; i a.length; ++i ) if ( a[i].href.match('experts-exchange.com') ) try {
f = 1;
var p = a[i];
while ( p != null ) {
if ( p.tagName == 'LI' ) {
p.parentNode.removeChild( p );
break;
} else p = p.parentNode;
}
if ( p == null ) a[i].parentNode.removeChild( a[i] );
} catch ( x ){}
}
void(0);
I see a lot of complaints about Google Instant and now this (which really doesn't display instant pages - you still have to mouse over the links). My question is - who actually uses the Google home page? I never see Google Instant because I do all my searches from the search box on my browsers (Chrome or Firefox). My phone I just say what I want to search for and it comes up (Android platform).
I think people just like to complain.
When we were young and would hear the old people complain about this and that and always say that in their day it was waaayyyy better....yeahhhh......
Vinaka Jo
next is Google TV... just sit and enjoy whatever they want to feed you
The first poster said "First, pressing Enter was to much work..." Huh? No, written in English, it should have read "First, pressing Enter was too much work..." To refers, um, to something, to go, to be, to write, to immolate, to Indianapolis. Too is similar to also, as in eat beans and bangers too, not merely beans alone. This is one of the most egregious, and sadly most prevalent, errors in English usage we see lately. It's become almost acceptable among those so illiterate that they know no better. I hope that, given the nature of the users of slashdot, we here DO know better, and even though the use of 'to' for 'too' happened twice in the initial post that engendered this thread, perhaps is was only that the poster trusted to spellcheck, and only made the error due to extreme fatigue. I'd rather not think that said poster actually CHOSE to write in such a sadly ignorant fashion. Peace.
I don't care about the other features either way, but god damn the keyboard navigation is annoying. Particularly on my netbook where scrolling with the keys is more comfortable than using the simulated mouse wheel. (Anybody get two finger scrolling to work reliably and comfortably on an Atom netbook? It should be possible but it's usually more of a pain than an improvement.)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
If job one is "don't be evil" this is long overdue. I'm serious.
First of all, this is only useful if you're willing to log onto the service from an untrusted machine. It shouldn't store or be automatically linked to personal information other than user interaction preferences. Previous settings should have a roll-back (similar to a wiki) in case someone messes with an unattended instance or sniffed and hacked from some library PC. Vandalism should be easily dealt with by a simple revert and a change of password.
The preferences available might read like a sequence of Slashdot polls.
How do you feel about your keyboard?
A) good for catching toast crumbs
B) round keys good, square keys bad
C) can hum a few bars, but don't ask me to shift key
D) Liszt himself would blanch watching me type
How do you feel about interactive whiz-bang?
A) Every key a hot key to destinations unknown? Cool!
B) Jiggle good, stutter bad.
C) I'm tighter than my Amish chess correspondent.
D) My enter key is operated through a postage meter which prints receipts.
Are you social?
A) Don't tell about my varroa mites, K?
B) Happiness is a tribe of peanuts.
C) If you hate something send it away, if it comes back, kill it.
D) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
How do you feel about novelty?
A) I miss Clippy
B) ask forgiveness
C) ask permission
D) those little Roombas in the Smithsonian make me nervous
What is your preferred display resolution?
A) dangles off my keychain
B) flips open with one thumb
C) flips open with two thumbs
D) I'm an authorized EyeWonder theme park
What's your idea of light entertainment?
A) outtakes from Married with Children
B) Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration (aka The Blues Brothers)
C) Lord of the Rings trilogy in a single viewing
D) The Seventh Seal, looped, Criterion edition, Swedish/Latin without subtitles
Do you have anything else to add?
A) 3.141592
B) Captain Kirk
C) Elvis has left the room
D) Cmdr Taco
From a hierarchy of preferences from general to specific, default settings on new Google offerings could be set appropriately. It's time to stop pretending that there's a universal set of GUI defaults that span three orders of magnitude on personal aptitude and work style.
Seriously, real friends respect taste. My real friends don't stuff my face into a bling parlour or offer me a Bud Light. Why can't my online services have half as much clue?
The alternative here is to watch Facebook slurp and dribble.
From RockMelt: Modestly Useful, But Not for Enterprises
When you first launch RockMelt, you have to sign in with your Facebook account. No account? You can't use RockMelt. Also, RockMelt requests that you agree to a long list of Facebook permissions, such as "Access my basic information," "Access my data any time," and "Access my custom friend list." ... [RockMelt] stores and synchronizes your data on its servers. That offers a benefit because you may log into RockMelt on any computer and see your same configuration.
Slashdot is meant to be news for nerds.
Yet most of these comments are basically against a companies idea to make searching faster. The main complaints seems to be:
The first complaint seems to be an argument about what made search engines good when 56K modems were all the rage. Simple meant fast loading times. Now though i don't think that this argument should be the rule of internet we have bigger and better bandwidths, why shouldn't search results be as rich as possible to save you time?
The second complaint is redundant because you can change your preferences to still need to use your loved enter button. I know what you are going to say though " i don't want to change my preferences" To which i say, "You are meant to be a nerd. Changing preferences to suit obscure purposes is what nerds do. Nerd up."
The third complaint is dumb because getting a thumb of broccoli is better than getting a full size page. Its like you've forgotten google has an image search which can produce the same broccoli results, without having to click a preview icon.
It all sounds like no-one wants any progress, things are great now. I used to think the same thing when i was forced to switch from the arrow keys to WSAD when playing games. I was wrong. I'm not saying this is right, but my guess is this won't kill google, In 5 years when google adds another feature to its search, you'll all complain about this as the good old days.
I know 0 meth users, and all 0 of them are rapists. That's 100%! You can't argue with statistics like that, man!
L'Hôpital fail.
You must write The Book, and then tear away belief. Only you can save the light of man --Gary Numan
If only one had the smarts to load a half dozen or more of these candidate pages in tabs (perhaps with a special mouse button - like the center one). And then quickly check and close them while others are loading. Unthinkable...
Remember when Google won us all over with their simplistic no frills search results?
I remember when all my search needs were covered by dir or ls.
doesn't support AJAX or flash plugins.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Come on, editors. Grammar is a set of simple rules.
...as was typing in the second 'o'.
I don't get it, why should it require a license?
Free Martian Whores!
Because it can be dangerous if you don't know how it works, just like a car.
Know that if you drink alcohol, you will peak one hour later, and come down at a rate of 0.15 g/L per hour. Know that cannabis decreases reflex and can increase anxiety. Know that physiological effects of tobacco only last for one week when you quit smoking, know that LSD requires very carefully measured quantities and that an excess can damage your brain, know that crack is harder to quit than heroin, which is harder to quit than cocaine (so if you already experienced cocaine expect heroin to be harder to quit).
Know all that, have a test about that before getting the licence and with that knowledge, manage to be a law-abiding citizen while being a psychotropics user. The fact that it is compatible is hidden by the lack of information from vendors and the lack of education by users.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
But driving a car is dangerous to everyone; drugs are only dangerous to the drug user. IMO an adult should have the right to screw his or her lif up any way they want.
Free Martian Whores!
Isn't this technology going to cause the same kind of bandwidth issues as AVG's LinkScanner? It sure looks like the potential is there, as Google will have to hit those sites to create the thumbnail images.
This is not (purely) for your benefit as a user, of course: the real reason they're doing this is so that they will get a better hint on which pages are actually relevant. You see, they can't track which of all pages you had to wade through that actually had the info you were looking for with the current system (since hitting "Back" to go back to the results page to try another result does not send any requests back to their server). But this way, if people start hovering over links and only click on the ones that appear the most relevant, they suddenly have a much better data than before (and the competition). Very smart move.
.. is to much work, too.
click the magnifying lens
Because it can be dangerous if you don't know how it works, just like a car.
Know that if you drink alcohol, you will peak one hour later, and come down at a rate of 0.15 g/L per hour. Know that cannabis decreases reflex and can increase anxiety. Know that physiological effects of tobacco only last for one week when you quit smoking, know that LSD requires very carefully measured quantities and that an excess can damage your brain, know that crack is harder to quit than heroin, which is harder to quit than cocaine (so if you already experienced cocaine expect heroin to be harder to quit).
Know all that, have a test about that before getting the licence and with that knowledge, manage to be a law-abiding citizen while being a psychotropics user. The fact that it is compatible is hidden by the lack of information from vendors and the lack of education by users.
++100000 informative, rational and sane!!!
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected