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Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly, And People Are Very Angry (zdnet.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for ZDNet: Every major user interface (UI) redesign project is a hit and miss game, and Google's new Chrome UI appears to be a colossal miss. Designed with mobile devices in mind, the new Chrome user interface style was officially rolled out in September this year, with the release of Chrome version 69. Not all users liked the new UI, and this was clear from the beginning, with some users voicing their discontent online even back then. However, those users who didn't appreciate the new lighter-toned Chrome interface had the option to visit the chrome://flags page and modify a Chrome setting and continue using Chrome's older UI.
But with Chrome version 71, released earlier this month, Google has removed the Chrome flag that allowed users to use the old UI. As you might imagine, this change did not go well, at all. Chrome's new UI might have been developed with a mobile-first approach in mind, but the UI is problematic on laptops and desktops, where its lighter tone and rounded tabs make it extremely hard to distinguish tabs from one another, especially when users open multiple tabs. Since being able to distinguish and switch between tabs at a fast pace is an important detail in most of today's internet-based jobs, many users have been having trouble adapting to the new UI both at work and at home, especially if they're the kind of people who deal with tens of tabs at the same time.
But with Chrome version 71, released earlier this month, Google has removed the Chrome flag that allowed users to use the old UI. As you might imagine, this change did not go well, at all. Chrome's new UI might have been developed with a mobile-first approach in mind, but the UI is problematic on laptops and desktops, where its lighter tone and rounded tabs make it extremely hard to distinguish tabs from one another, especially when users open multiple tabs. Since being able to distinguish and switch between tabs at a fast pace is an important detail in most of today's internet-based jobs, many users have been having trouble adapting to the new UI both at work and at home, especially if they're the kind of people who deal with tens of tabs at the same time.
Not specific to Chrome, but - why does "mobile first" generally seem to consistently result in "crappy everywhere"?
#DeleteChrome
I haven't noticed anything. Just opened "Help -> About" and I have "Version 71.0.3578.98 (Official Build) (64-bit)". My phone is v71 too. Is this some Apple thing?
"its lighter tone and rounded tabs make it extremely hard to distinguish tabs from one another, especially when users open multiple tabs."
My eye sight is garbage and I'm normally the first person to complain about something being bad, but I've had no problems with Chrome 71. In fact, I didn't even know that this latest version was as described, although now that I look more closely, I can see that I don't get to see the rounded shapes of the inactive tabs until I hover over them.
I can see the favicon for each tab clearly, I can see each tab's close button, and I can see a clear divider between each tab. I can also clearly see which is the active tab.
Move along, nothing to see here, except a beat up.
I use Chrome both in work and at home. I would end up having a lot of tabs open in work, especially. I've never seen any if the issues being described here. Nor heard anyone in work complain. So I really don't get this...
Is this maybe just one person trying to find a reason to rant because they just don't like change, no matter how small, and are blowing stuff out of proportion?
Bitching about non-issues.
Switch to one of the hundred browsers that are available besides Google's spyware.
Done.
...everyone told us to use the system theme when drawing UI widgets and such. What changed?
Consistent theming is good for the end user, but doesn't help any one app stand out. This is the blink tag theory of design.
This sounds like maybe a Mac only issue? I've always noticed Mac colors look washed out and low contrast at the high intensity end. Something about the gamma difference, like it's higher than on Windows/Linux.
That went the way of "Things you can click should look different to things you can't" and "No matter how much the arty farty ui guys have #@%&ed things up to make it look 'pretty', you can always right click to get things done".
Do you remember when "web browser chrome" used to refer to different visual themes for user interface the that you could write yourself and choose between in the Mozilla web browser?
There were quite a few of them to choose between on a section on Mozillazine called The ChromeZone. The barrier to entry was quite low, all themes as images and as text files written in the XML-based language XUL. I had contributed a web browser UI theme to The Chrome Zone myself.
But the full-fledged Mozilla browser was known to be stupidly slow and got abandoned for the slimmed-down Firefox.
Firefox used native widgets, that were consistent with other programs on the platform that it ran on. On Linux (or other OS with X) the native widgets were GTK+ widgets, which had its own theming system -- also user-made in text format, with low barrier to entry and with many to choose from.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
... email when they can't get messaging right on a platform (Android), they wholly own.
This is only the latest in a general trend of Google of making their UI -- desktop, mobile and web -- progressively worse.
This being a distinct change, top, front and centre, and not something snuck in sideways in a seldom-used dialogue box, it is something that people notice immediately.
People have been upset about several more minor changes for a longer time, but for some, this was the last straw. ...
Reduced contrast, hover-indicators that take long to appear, hamburger menus and close-buttons that you don't see until you hover over them, wasted whitespace
Those are all crimes against good design, and part of Google's "Material Design" or "Polymer" or whatever they decide to call it these days.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
For some reasons modern designers are hell bent on making UI as opaque as possible and here at slashdot it's been already discussed multiple times.
I've found the only justification to this madness: designers have long become redundant but they want to be paid that's why we have new trends all the time and new design decisions which make the user completely lost.
For me, the best design was implemented in Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/7 OS'es without ribbon. The worst came in the form of Windows 8/MS Office 2007 and it's been all downhill since then. Too bad corporations just don't want to admit that and they still insist that there's one UI which fits them all which cannot be further from the truth as large displays with mouse and keyboard are a completely different mode of operation than touch devices with comparatively small screens.
Hush, the official UI spokesperson for the entire Internet is speaking.
No sig today...
Okay, but first you'll have to tell me what "whingeing" is. It sounds pretty bad, whatever it is.
not all changes are for the better....
The world is going to hell, there's a madman in the white house, global warming is out of control, the stock markets are crashing, but dammit, don't fuck with my UI!
I think this article may be a case of exaggeration, but if not, there's certainly more important things to be angry about...
The thing that this particular teletubby interface update broke is information density. After the update, the new skin in both gmail and calendar quite simply puts less on a screen. On the desktop it is annoying. On the mobile devices with limited screen real estate, it is downright devastating for usage and productivity.
It's as if since the turn of the century, user interfaces have been continuously redesigned to be more and more friendly toward children under 2 - with rounded corners and buttons too big to accidentally swallow. It's as if Fischer Price have been contracted to do user interface designs ever since.
As long as the ads are tracking and users can see the ads its all ok.
GUI design: the user space around the ads.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Anyone who willingly uses Google products is asking for either disappointment or betrayal.
How many times does Google have to arbitrarily kill off "products" before you cretins GET IT ?
Be quick now, and mod this post down because it threatens your sad little self image as a willing user of shit ( Google ) products.
Chrome's UI has stunk on ice since day one. Now they're angry?
I do hate the trend of mobile apps with crap UI, though. For example, Firefox for mobile would benefit from a preferences dialog that would let me disable pocket, and tell the browser to actually load the URL I called it with instead of showing me quick links (including pocket.) I had never even heard of Pocket before Firefox integrated it over the wishes of the users, who proclaimed that we did not want it. Now I think it's the antichrist, and I hope their HQ falls over and bursts into flames.
We're going to need a new Mozilla foundation, without blackjack and hookers. Because they are apparently spending all their time partying, and none listening to users. We're gonna need a new Phoenix browser.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With Firefox killing their real add ons and Edge becoming a Chrome clone you are effectively limited to the Choices of the Chrome developers of what is good for browsing the web. You could have stopped this, but you didn't. The last resistance is in the Firefox forks but they will be crushed eventually as Chrome exerts its monopoly powers.
Google creates drive. Picture pages move to it. Ugly white on gray, hard to read.
Eat my shorts, Google.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Use firefox, for the next few weeks the interface will be very similar to the old chrome's interface. But be warned that, in two releases, they will copy the new chrome's interface, and then you will be back to square one...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I ditched in about that time. Who needs it? Firefox is fine on my phone and by adding a firewall, changing DNS settings, and ditching any Google app you can attempt to reduce the spying.
But if you have a gmail account you still have to go in every so often and delete the history they have collected on you. If you think that doing this once and setting everything to off will work you need to wake up. They change the wording or 'functionality' and when doing so they turn 'new features' on by default, again.
maybe that UI designers come from the gaming industry. They design puzzles. Once one get used to things, hide the toolbar, hide the scrolling bars, hide and seek is the new trend. That is what games are for: find the treasure! Find the current URL, fine the place to print, jackpot. Even when reading stories, the pictures have to appear dynamically, nonlinear story telling makes even reading a text feel like running through a maze. Maybe one has to swipe left, maybe down, maybe click. Just add a few adds, which attack from random sides and we are in a full blown computer game. Sometimes, one really misses the simplicity of the 90ies.
I switched to Firefox last year around October after getting sick and tired of being the product to sell to Google. Now, everything I am on is open source and mostly Google-free. I only use Google for map because it's a lot better than the free/open source one.
No, Google Chrome's UI has *always* been ugly. The shame is they won't let users change it easily. I use Chrome for only a handful of websites that simply don't work very well with other browsers. I can't imagine having to use it all of the time.
Nobody could have seen that coming!
Seriously this is what I call the cycle of /r/chrome because I see it all the time on there.
Honestly the changes aren't even all that big. The most noticeable changes are the tab design and the moving of the profiles button one inch down. Given that the tabs were ALWAYS the same shape, I'm not sure how changing that shape now makes it difficult to tell sites apart when it didn't before. If it's difficult now, it was difficult then, and it was probably difficult in every other browser. Get the site's creator to invest in a good favicon and now you can tell it apart. Chrome can only show you what the site has configured.
Also if you don't like the colors, fix it yourself. Chrome supports custom themes. Use one.
On a side note, related to mobile UI, Slashdot's commenting sucks on mobile. I tried to post this four times and each time my comment form would randomly get closed and cleared out while I was typing. I eventually gave up and switched to my desktop PC where I can type a comment just fine. Not to mention typing HTML codes on a mobile keyboard is a pain.
Switch back? I never left.
20 years of interface and functional stability is damn near newsworthy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly, And People Are Very Angry"
Jesus, please stop with the HuffPost and DailyMail style headlines. FFS, this isn't Romper Room or The Enquirer.
Alternative headlines:
Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly and It Broke The Internet
Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly and Cardi B Clapped Back at Them
Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly and Demi Lovato Showed Off Her Toned Abs
Google Chrome's New UI so Ugly that the Queen's Protocol Made Her Do WHAT?
What Does Kanye Think About The New Chrome Interface?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I didn't even notice much of a change until I came across this article.
I think people are whining to whine, and not much more. It's barely much of a change.
Is there anything that Chrome does better than Brave?
Yes, step aside, I need to ask about his macbook keyboard, he'll solve the whole fiasco by saying "mine is working fine"
Hopefully this will be once and for all the death of chrome. EULA states things no one should agree too.
http://lmgtfy.com/?s=d&q=whingeing
Try this chromium browser https://www.centbrowser.com/ it still has the old UI
I vaguely remember the name Peter Kasting. Don't remeber where, but I'm pretty sure the context was something to do with assholes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Don't worry, Firefox ignored clear majority user preferences with its UI change choices on back-to-back-to-back releases and they are still doing great. Chrome has nothing to worry about.
Oh.... wait....
That is probably because of something UI people have known since at least 1984 with the original Macintosh, but UX millennials are clueless about: you have to always read and save the state of the modifier keys (control, shift, command, etc.) at the moment the key (or mouse) event happens, and keep it as a single object. You can't just poll it later when you feel like it, because it can change in that time. UX people also only use the fastest PCs possible, so they never have the lag that shows this problem, and will just tell you to get a faster computer. (Hint: it worked fine on an 8MHz 68000.)
One game I play a lot is built on Unity, and I'm not sure if it's part of the custom game code, or an event loop in the Unity base code (I suspect the latter), but not only does it not save modifier keys along with events, it only polls for events once per display frame! One effect of this is when dragging items, with sufficient UI processing lag and a fast enough mouse drag, the initial mouse coordinates of the drag can be on a completely different object than where the original click happened. And when the frame rate goes below 10fps or so, you can't double-click anymore, because it doesn't save the time when the event happened (something else that should be in an event object), and instead compares when the two clicks were processed. At a sufficiently low frame rate, this will always be beyond the double-click timing threshold.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
How does some fresh out of school kid get to make the decisions in these companies that end up dooming them?
Because the people who don't understand subtleties of UI design and implementation get promoted to management, and end up hiring punk kids who also don't understand subtleties of UI design and implementation. Punk kids are not the people you want designing UIs anyhow, you want grumpy middle-aged perfectionists who get pissed off when they have to use bad UIs. (Note that Steve Jobs was a well-known perfectionist, and that both the Mac OS and hardware have declined in quality since his death.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
with the intent of causing users to talk to their browser
Well I certainly talk to my phone all the time. The usual words are "Fucking Google!" and "What the fuck, Google?"
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
When they un-linked G+ from YouTube? When they killed G+ completely?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }