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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.
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.
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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?
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 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
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
Click "Instant Is On", click "Off". Tadaa! You're right back to the 'good old days'.
Personally, i thought Instant was jarring and annoying at first, but I decided to give it a couples days to get used to it. Turns out I think it's actually pretty nice, if nothing else it lets you change your queries on the fly, adding more keywords if necessary to narrow down your search by just continuing to type.
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.
Look at this guys: Everybody who wants "simple searches' has at most a 5 digit UID, mostly 3 and 4 digit.
The nurses must be late with the AM meds again.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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!
Furthermore, even though I wish the internet was really fast everywhere, it isn't. Features like this "instant on" feature slow down my typing: I have come to the point and typing speed that I know what my search term is and I don't wait one term at a time to see if I want to "narrow my searching field" by selecting another term. I can type at 60 words per minute+...I do not want their help
Oh and it gets really annoying when I type something, hit enter, then have it do a completely different search for me because my mouse pointer was floating near by...
I really want something like the following:
http://www.google.com/classic
No frills, no extra bandwidth consumed, no searching for the wrong damn thing when I didn't ask for it, and no Google recommend...these new features are just as useful (to me) as the operating systems and likewise gui on Verizon Wireless cellphones - which is completely hideous. /endrant
PS: yes I will still use Google, I just wish for a simpler time
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
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
In older machines, as the metal wears and clearancesgrow, it's often a good idea to use a thicker lubricant to speed things up. I recommend 5W-40 Delvac 1.
"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.
"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.