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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."
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.
"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." I think that's the case here. Google's counting on the fact that once you go black, you never go back.
I have a sneaking suspicion that once Google+ goes live, you'll be able to skin most of Google's apps with a theme of your choosing.
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.
I'm torn by your comment. In one sense I quit using Gawker all together when they applied their new redesign (because it broke if obscene amounts of javascript wasn't enabled). So it's not like a bad design hasn't made me quit a site...
However they changed a white bar to a black bar. WTF people. Based on a lot of reactions a sane man would assume that they murdered your cat in front of your children. Breathe.
I already "skin" gmail and iGoogle with a fairly dark theme and have a fairly dark "persona" on firefox. The new dark color looks better for me.
Then when your OS application bar and browser toolbar/menu will gradually disappear, you will not be surprised.
...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 quit using their sites altogether as well, for exactly the same reasons as you did. I was merely trying to comment on the fact that I think you captured a bit of both sides of the issue here. On one hand, developers are trying to force change in the name of "process improvement." On the other hand, people want things to stay the same, even if it leaves them behind. In many cases, people are taken aback when they are TOLD that the new product is better when that improvement isn't quite apparent. As a developer, you have to weigh the value of improvement with the disruption that you are causing.
In Gawker's case, they majorly screwed the pooch. They massively broke their site while adopting the condescending "we know better than you, so deal with it" tone of voice, which caused many of their previously loyal readers to leave. You at least realize the fact that users are afraid of change and that some (including myself) are very resistant to that change. That puts you WAY ahead of the curve compared to the Gawker team.
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.
Yeah, pretty much every time I use Google now I start wondering whether there's a better search engine out there because every update makes it less useful. Why should I have to tell the search engine to actually search for what I specifically asked it to search for and not try to guess what I really wanted to search for?
It's particularly problematic for technical searches which often have acronyms which are close to real words and Google 'corrects' them for me.
If you have a vision issue (or just a crappy monitor) it becomes about 10 times harder to read. What advantage does it provide beyond eye candy?
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.
No way, I love scroll wheel zooming and get frustrated when it doesn't work on other maps. Sounds like it needs to be an optional setting.
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.
I am enjoying that Google is evolving, the no logo is a better, it is softer and easier on the eyes. Seems everyone is complaining, Google has my full support on this.
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.
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
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".
There was always a menu at the top. Now it's a different color, ...
Yes, but in my case, I think the reason it's a problem is that the new color exactly mimics the bar you get with Firefox saying "Firefox prevented this page from ...", for some particular suspicious value of "...". I use several browsers routinely in my web testing and browsing, but FF is one of my first tools, so my subconscious notices this dark-grey bar and tells me to pay attention to it. Google's use of the same color scheme in the same position is rather annoying, and I've also wondered if I could find a way to make it not so intrusive.
Of course, google and Firefox come from rather unrelated sources, so I don't expect them to coordinate their actions. But I do find this a good example of why so much stuff on the Web is jumbled, inconsistent and confusing. As if I really needed such examples ... ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
There was always a menu at the top. Now it's a different color, and has a new item. Not a big deal.
Google.com used to look nice and clean and sleek, now they've continued their uglifying+overcomplicating streak by making the top of the page a different color for no apparent reason (except to draw attention away from what I actually go to the site for, the search box). Another example of the need Google seems to have to be seen to be doing something regardless of whether it is actually an improvement.
First time I saw it nothing went wrong.
Using the wheel for zoom (and click-wheel + mouse movement for pan which, BTW, Maps implements) is the standard navigation technique for canvases that enable zoom/pan functionality. So they've done the right thing here...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
Use quotation marks around the problematic words? I find that I mistype things more often than I use abbreviations that are close to a real word. As a result, it's a net win.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
... check out what this techy news blog did to their story pages.
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