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Google's New Design
smitty777 writes "You may have already noticed some of the changes in Google as part of their multi-month design slam. These design changes include information architecture focus, seamless device integration, and simplifying a number of elements. According to the official Google blog, the changes over the next few months will affect Google Search, Maps and Gmail. The black navigation bar in place right now is also part of the Google +Project."
If it ain't broke - don't fix it. They should have left it alone... Now they have added another layer of clutter to the screen. As it is, a good 25 to 30 percent of my screen real estate is devoted to various toolbars and file menus. I think this is secretly part of their plan to drive people away from Internet Explorer towards Chrome. They want the web application to have the menus and tool bars rather than the browser itself.
I have a bad habit of reusing the same google queries to find the same websites again. Suddenly I am getting results that are not the same and in fact much worse. It looks like they are trying to guess more what I want. I wish google offered a version that respected punctuation and basically let you search the web the way google code can be searched.
It isn't awful by any means, but I think they need a lighter color font for the black bar at the top. Also, I swear they have shrunken the size of the font and search box on the main google page. Is anybody else encountering this?
I cut way back on Google usage a few months ago when they took over the arrow keys' normal smooth window scrolling and made it jump from one search result to another. That just makes it hard to read and track which entry is next when it jumps like that.
How about a Google Classic page, just the little friendly box that we type our queries into, hit enter, and get our results. Nothing else.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Soon after my co-workers started logging into their workstations the cacophony of whining lasted about five minutes... mostly about the new black background color for the toolbar, a striking contrast to the previous white.
People I know, myself included, aren't happy with the change, but that seems to be Google. They tend to change things and users get used to it. But this is a bit different. With no way to change the color of the toolbar -- other than a developer extension or script -- users are stuck with black.
Unless there's some setting that I'm not seeing...
They will hate it.
Anything that changes they hate.
If someone tries to lighten things up a bit they hate it.
They want the product to stay the same every day and never improve them, until it gets so outdated that it not used at all... Except by them.
For being tech people, I am surprised how resistant to change we are.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Are there any good before/after screenshot comparisons? (As in comparing now with a couple days ago, not the now and 1997 comparison in the linked article, and full screen rather than individual elements like in the other article.)
They already had some kind of bar at the top before, so the only difference i noticed is that it turned black. I figure if i don't immediately notice the change it _probably_ isn't that bad. Not like when they switched to the ugly new favicon or made the font size huge.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Is there any search engine left that doesn't suck. I'm looking for one that,
1. Searches for what I want it to search for instead of what it thinks I wanted to search for. Google is always wrong on this one and has been getter worse and worse since they implemented it.
2. Actually presents relevant results. Google used to present relevant information but now I kept the same handful of pages.
3. Has an uncluttered interface. One like google used to have.
4. Has a maps that don't suck. What retard thought it was a good idea to make the scroll wheel zoom?
With Javascript disabled, a GIS for foo works just fine with cookies enabled, but if I use the same URL, without cookies enabled, fails.
With Javascript enabled, the same URL for the GIS works whether cookies are enabled or not.
No, Bing got caught incorporating Google's results. And personally, I don't care how Bing's doing it. Their results are better. And yes, Microsoft is scum.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
The blogs are my biggest problem with Google. If I'm searching for something technology or video game related and my search query happens to resemble an old news headline or phrase, I end up with thousands of blogs repeating the exact same story with slightly rearranged headlines. And god help you if your search phrase is part of some song lyric. Why do that many lyrics websites even exist?
Or the stylish's script.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
The first time I saw it, I was using the SSL version of Google, which doesn't have links for the other search types at the top because they don't have SSL support yet. So I loaded the page and saw a big black bar across the top of the page, with almost nothing in it. My first thought was that the firefox notification bar had crashed. My second was that Google had put up a "redacted box" as some sort of statement against censorship, like the colored ribbons you see. Then I saw the "Sign in" text at the far right of the screen and realized what it was.
Exactly. For those who think that the results are the same I'd encourage them to try it. I do switch back to Google occasionally, but for primary sources (ie. anything statistical, anything in the government, anything research related) Google just sucks. Unless you want Wikipedia and blogs, then have at it.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
I've found on the average when looking for something obscure(IT related) the top search results from Bing are more current, where the same search on Google will produce results 3-4 years old. When I do search with google I also find the "popups" regarding changing my homepage or installing chrome highly annoying.
No, I think techies are resistant to useless changes. If you want to make superficial changes, fine; if you want to make changes that some will love and others hate, fine. Just do it on a fork, and leave me something that works reliably until evolution has a bit of time to work on the fruits of your creative genius. Yes, that's right: I believe services like Google should have dev forks for all the whizzbang new features that will go extinct before I give a crap.
Then when your OS application bar and browser toolbar/menu will gradually disappear, you will not be surprised.
... I'll get over it.
...where it used to be one. And now you have to navigate a menu to do it.
K.I.S.S.
(function() {
})();
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Among the changes, Google announced that it's new motto is "Be evil". The black bar marks its new corporative mentality, that involves new goals such as using it's privileged position to take over the world and kicking puppies.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
I always use a "bookmarklet" to search instead of Google's page. Create one and include search terms like "-blogspot.com -lyrics" and refine that way your searches.
If have several defined searches and have put them as buttons on the bookmarks toolbar. Here's one for Firefox (one line, will be broken):
javascript:q=document.getSelection();for(i=0;iframes.length;i++){q=frames[i].document.getSelection();if(q)break;}if(!q)void(q=prompt('enter%20keywords%20or%20highlight%20words%20on%20web%20page',''));if(q)location.href='http://www.google.com/search?client=googlet&hl=en&num=25&complete=0&safe=off&q='+escape(q)
the mobile site got a huge overhaul by comparison, complete with bloaty icons. just what I needed. slower load times when I open my phone's browser.
Just did multiple searches on Google and Bing and got different results from both engines on each search. Whatever Bing was doing to copy Google's results, it's not doing it anymore.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Dear Google, please stop using the scroll wheel to zoom in/out in Google Maps. It drives me nuts every time I use it. Better yet, give us an option to use the wheel to pan (which would be the logical mapping of that function) instead of zoom.
Sent from my iPhone
I mean, before the change, people were stuck with white.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
And this is on topic how?
I8-D
You could just use the sidebar to choose exactly the timeframe you want.
Dilbert RSS feed
Why? Here's why: http://xkcd.com/918/
That was a moronic comment. They already have Chrome as the OS. It is called Chrome OS, so of course their browser and websites are going to gear towards that.
Using Google or Bing will still get you only Google results, since Bing just imports what Google returns.
That is far from the truth. Read up more on the issue; not even Google claimed what you are. Microsoft's toolbar monitored the results of your google searches, and which links you clicked, and the data was incorporated in to Bing's results, as one minor factor. Try a search on both, and compare the results; obviously, neither are copies of the other.
Too late. I already found that with Bing I get primary sources rather than the first search result being Wikipedia followed by a bunch of blogs, so I switched. (And I hate Microsoft.)
If you hated Microsoft there's no way in hell you'd be using Bing, so I'll take your second statement as a lie, and by association the first statement as well.
By staring Google down in hopes that they'd blink, Microsoft managed to all but lose any relevance it might have had in the mobile OS business and barely gained a blip in the search space.
So you can come down to Slashdot and push your shitty search engine til your fingers bleed. It won't make any difference.
That black top bar kind of reminds me of WordPress when logged in, and somehow it makes me uneasy ...
I guess I just need to get used to it, but it seems out of place, doesn't it?
We put you on the Internet map,
www.racknine.com
Actually, it's more accurate to say that Big got caught presenting Google's search results as its own. The difference is subtle, but significant.
The practice of connecting to other search sites and incorporating their results in your own site's results is not only common now; it's also recognized as a separate sort of search with its own emerging standards. Pretty much all the big search sites, including google, are involved in this development, and google has contributed significantly to the emerging standards.
This is really no different that the old practice among scholars of incorporating other's results. The significant part is that you are expected to let the reader know that you've done this. Traditionally, this was done in the footnotes that reference the publication that you've taken information from. If you don't include the reference, you've committed an act of plagiarism, but if you properly credit your sources, you've committed an act of scholarship.
The web-search arena is slowly building a version of the same sort of thing. As with the traditional scholarly system, Bing's sin wasn't presenting results taken from others; Bing's sin was presenting the results as their own, and not crediting their sources.
The computer field has many example of this sort of offense. A big one back in the 1990s was when Sun offended the open-source crowd. Sun had always incorporated a lot of "FOSS" code in their products, with the blessing of the code's authors. But in this case, they stripped out all the credits from the code, making it look like their were claiming all the code as their own. As in traditional scholarship, and as with the recent Bing offense, this was totally unacceptable to the FOSS crowd. The rule is "You can use our stuff all you like, but you must give us proper credit for our work." Sun and Bing both violated this rule, and were properly (and very publicly) criticized for this. Sun eventually apologized and restored the credits, but the incident was never forgotten by the people who followed the story. (Did Bing ever actually apologize for their plagiarism?)
Now if we could just get the "news industry" to adopt similar rules of always crediting their sources. This is a good part of why a lot of the growing online news system feels so little sympathy for the traditional news publications. They almost never included even bylines with their news, only with their editorials. Their web sites mostly continue the practice of omitting source attribution. When they start giving their sources proper credit, they may find that a lot of us will have much more sympathy for their plight.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Shame Bing's results are shit.
You could just use the sidebar to choose exactly the timeframe you want.
Or he could use the engine that gives him the results he wants without having to fiddle with a slider.
I'm curious... if the question were reversed, and someone said:
Microsofts results are 3-4 years old, while google's tend to be current, would you defend Microsoft by suggesting using microsofts 'timeframe' slider if it had one?
Somehow i seriously doubt it.
I find this hilarious. When I noticed the change, I said "Huh, it's black now." and my life continued on as normal.
Google on Android doesn't have the black bar it has a Chrome tab look to the menu where the selected section is a white tab and the others are in a grey bar that doesn't stick out nearly as much. The black bar of the desktop version contrasts too much with the rest of the page.
If I'm searching for something technology or video game related and my search query happens to resemble an old news headline or phrase, I end up with thousands of blogs repeating the exact same story with slightly rearranged headlines. And god help you if your search phrase is part of some song lyric. Why do that many lyrics websites even exist?
Heh. A related problem I've run into lately is that I've been trying to get a handle on the HTML5 developments. The problem is that by now, there seem to be over 1000 HTML5 "forums", most of which get a handful of questions per month, and which are mostly answered (if at all) by the forum's maintainer. You'd think they'd want to get together and pool their resources into one or a few major "HTML5 info" sites. But it looks like, while everyone agrees with this, they all think "It obviously should be my site." And when you ask google or any other search site an HTML5 question, you get zillions of links to versions of the same question, most of which aren't answered. If you find an answer and bookmark that site, you find that it doesn't have answers to many other questions.
This is a case where old usenet system did a much better job. But we all know that usenet is dead, right? It's been replaced by "much better" web sites, each of which has its own idiosyncratic interface that requires yet another login account and has a different UI from all the others. And a large number of sites dealing with the same topic.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
For me there isn't enough contrast. Gray text on black doesn't stand out.
I wouldn't have had an issue with it if it was configurable, but it isn't.
crazy dynamite monkey
This was the firs results I got using Google when I searched for Galloping Gurtie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Somehow you've made Bing and MS sound even more pathetic. Maybe they should just double down on their new competitive strategy and sue somebody. Maybe they can at least get a few scraps.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Maybe you suck at search? I use it for almost everything(occasional I'll sue a new search engine fro the hell of it) and I never go past the first page.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Absolutely. OTOH, I must use a magic Google because I never have any of the problems these people complain about, and BinG looks like a mess. I just used it to see what I get because of this conversation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't like the direction. People flocked to Google because it was minimalist and worked. They expanded their market, but kept their face mostly the same-- minimalist. Now they're going Google+ and open the way for someone to be "Just like Google was before they bloated their landing page".
I like google's design more than bing too. But I can absolutely relate to all the complaints about google returning piles of worthless crap that's been 'SEO' onto the first page, old results, blog results, "aggregators", and plagiarized sites that are just scraping from each others, etc.
If your google doesn't do that... then it is indeed magic google.
sometimes, the fuzziness in Google's interpretation of your search terms means that it's difficult to find what you want. E.g. I recently needed to find a combination like A[0-9A-Z]123. As far as I know, this is impossible with Google. Also punctuation is sometimes a vital part of the search term, but gets ignored by Google.
Is there a search engine that allows for this type of exact searches? One that uses grep syntax would be ideal.
I do have a bias against MS, but yes, I think I would. The slider is very useful in general.
Dilbert RSS feed
Is it just me, or is Google Maps a usability nightmare?
At the top of the window you're losing a good deal of space to menus, search box, some other buttons. Do we really need all that white space around the search box?
On the left, there's the directions, My Maps, and other text. Why isn't this resizable, rather than just opened or closed?
Then there's the map itself. Was the UI designed by the same folks who put logos and ads over TV shows? There's the pan control--covering the map; the zoom control--covering the map; the traffic button--covering the map; the idiotic satellite/map button--covering the map. Why is that thing so big? The satellite button is about 3 times the size of the traffic button. 2 extra letters, 3 times the size.
After all the junk, the window is about 40% useful map.
If anyone still remembers, the simplicity of Google's front page was in stark contrast to Yahoo's front page. Now with all the scripts and garbage running in the background, gone are the days of going to google.com and just start typing. Now it's, wait for the page to finish loading so the first 3 or 4 letters I type aren't lost. The UI is still simple, but what's going on behind the scenes? It's a logo and a text box; why does it take so long to load?
Why do Google Maps look like it should be Yahoo! Maps circa 1999?
My biggest wish is that vendors would stop dictating how people use a tool and stop adding noise that can not be disabled. Remember google was supposed to have that no-nonsense interface for a reason... To be useful rather than 'pretty'.
There was a really nice new feature added recently I love. This allows me to remove sites from search results which always appear but never have any useful content to begin with (experts exchange, ask and associated spam link farms).
The only catch is that you have to be logged in to use it. Which I didn't used to mind until just recently...Now when I'm logged in +1 appears everywhere and there is no way to turn it off. That animated +1 icon designed specifically to catch my attention when I don't give a flying rats ass about telling my 'friends' every URL I like is annoying as hell.
The inability to click in a window with google search to gain focus to that window without accidently turning on the stupid site preview option with no way to disable still pisses me off to this day.
The inability to fully collapse the useless sidebar is also annoying.
It really feels like google is going out of their way to piss me off more and more with each passing month and I don't know why. We have spent thousands on adwords placement.
So.... Will this one have native HTML5? Or HTML6?
The first really legitimate complaint I've heard that actually affects the user. The reaction to the blackbar seems over the top. I don't like it that much either, but it's a 30px bar at the top of the page.
I think it's a funny design decision (we are all talking about it though, so maybe it's right on the mark.), but saying Google has forsaken its austere home page seems silly. Has anyone seen the epileptic fit waiting to happen on Yahoo's home page?
An important change for education.
At least on the search pages it is a very well thought out and intuitive design. I didn't even notice the change but was using the top bar to go to the images after a search before I stopped and thought something was different and noticed the bar at the top. Hopefully they continue to keep it simple and intuitive.
Unfortunately I feel they will probably end up with a bit of feature creep and bloat before long.
OMG facts!
Google has been playing catch up for years, but now they're changing their UI in gratuitous and overly animated ways without giving the users notification or a "classic" path out of it. Wow, they finally caught up to Facebook!
When I saw it I had to think of Drupal 7. There I like it, but on google it seems a bit aggressive... I wish I could make it white/neutral again.
What's after Google? There have been many companies who could do no wrong during their youth. They are full of life, energy and idealism (maybe "life: energy and idealism"). They seem to be for the little guy, infact they are the little guy made good. They have names like Larry and Sergey. And then they become Borg. Google's first fall from grace with me was the discovery that they (it) knew about multiple account awkwardness but weren't going to do anything about it, they had bigger plans. That seemed a little controlling and creepy. The same corp that once championed feeling lucky, now makes it very difficult just to get back the simple search box I first fell in love with. This makes me think: they're rounding the corner, they're losing touch, there's a young warrior waiting to lead a yet hopeful user base. I wonder who's out there waiting.
It also o takes an extra click to switch accounts now.
All my new incoming messages are marked important now:( WTF! Most of them aren't important, marking them all such loses value anyway, and that's what I used the star for.
Gmail used to be nearly perfect, and they are really fixing what ain't broke with this dumb "upgrades".
... check out what this techy news blog did to their story pages.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
changed my startup page to Yandex. The black bar is too bad. Its strange how little things can annoy so much.
Here's a guess, maybe the other guy is using IE...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
.. you never go back.
/or so I've heard..
its fake popups, on the right top corner of the screen or a horizontal bar on top. dunno how they find out google is not your homepage. but the chrome thing is very very annoying. i actually switched for a few days to chrome just to not see that shit again. but tree style tabs.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Yay, more useless shit for me to filter out with greasemonkey. Just like Slashdot.
I'd like to not accidentally +1 my midget donkey porn sites, Google. Just let me jerk in peace.
In the meantime, judging by the fat "Post" and "Search Comments" buttons right under the story, Slashdot has got a new design as well. This time, it was middle-click-to-open-in-new-tab that fell sacrifice to the rapid advance of Web 3.0 on the Slashdot community.
Go to the Google+ Tour page and click "Huddle". As the group chat is going on, click on the text entry form on the phone and type random letters. You can hit "send" as well.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Is Google trying to tell us something?
I think it was when Google Instant started, it's just headache-inducing. And, yes, I know you can turn it off.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You need to learn your google hacking syntax so as not to include blog types in your search.
doing something like "site:msdn.com vb.net " would limit all your searches to vb.net for only the msdn website.
There are many keywords that can be used of which you can apply the not operator "-" the minus sign...so as to say inurl:-blog
although it is not an exact science, you can refine the searches too....you just have to be creative...
here is a quick link http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html
No seriously, thank you. I love userscripts community for fixing google's 'improvements' so quickly. I'm 'bout THIS CLOSE to dumping google calendar after this bs today.
minus those ask yahoo answers. Google's useful if properly queried.
the big problem I saw when I opened my browser this am was all that extra white padding, and far less actual information shown, for no conceivable reason besides "aesthetics" (eg, what looks 'cool' to the PTB @ what used to be a somewhat open company).
I'm completely ashamed to admit that what I started to use in 07 as a 'not serious' calendar (scheduling the kids' events) turned into a massive app for my business, my husband's business, personal tasks, school and activities (kids), political events, and just regular old event planning for meals, etc. I bought 2 androids this year *because* of that one stupid ~cloud~ app (Google Calendar). The phone apps are still great; but after today, the "new aesthetic" doesn't allow me to see a complicated group of calendars and tasks anymore. The useless empty white padding makes the outer columns so small that the SCROLL BARS are bigger than the shown information! (And I have a widescreen laptop!)
Yes, I can (and sure as hell did) revert back to the "classic style", and will be writing or lifting scripts (greasemonkey) to whack the page back into shape, but my trust in Google "apps" (not the search engine or email) took a giant nosedive today. It's clear that they'd prefer Calendar to look 'stylish' rather than to present information, or they would have made this "new aesthetic" a skin.
(I don't care what color the menu bar is; or if I can put a doodad icon in a field; I just want to SEE my INFORMATION.)
It's completely jarred my trust in any company's "cloud" apps (and that was my first and only, since I d/l my gmail to my harddrive). I'm tucking my tail in and going back to local storage and apps, and going to figure out my own syncing schemes with the android.
(Sorry; I'm extraordinarily pissed off. And I trust Google about as much as I trust 'user friendly' Microsoft :& )
any kind of engine change; they made design changes. It's called a skin. A skin is an option; a preference; not 'progress' (unless they're making the app skinnable and just the default 'skin' changed).
And it's fine if they want to add skins, but to completely change the layout for 'aesthetics', at least call it a 'skin' and even make it default, but have other configurations (skins) available. THAT'S progress and change.
(Yes I reverted to "classic", but I doubt that option will be around long.)
progress