Google the way it's supposed to be
google.com
google.com
I only saw it in one of my browsers, so I figured they were doing a slow rollout, but it sounds like everyone else has been taken by surprise by the new interface, while I figured it was public knowledge long ago.
The walls are just a different shade, everything gets moved around a fraction. Nothing dramatic, just a lot of small changes.
You'd walk in and feel like you are in an unfamiliar place.
Unfamiliar ties right in with 'danger' on the reptilian brain level and that manifests itself as a feeling of being uncomfortable. Give it four weeks, change it back and people will be arguing the exact same thing.
Change always leads to resistance of this sort, even change for the better.
- initial bitching
- gradual acceptance
- the new is much better than the old
Time will tell on this one, if google reverts to the old lay-out then the conclusion is that they also thought that it was better before. But it is very well possible that this 'worse' lay-out is actually better for google, even if it is worse for the users, for instance because it increases their bottom line.
A design error is not always a business error.
Your point also hints at the fact that asking users isn't always the right thing to do - often they don't know exactly what they want. Either because they can't imagine it or because of the friction you describe.
Of course said idea was presented as a Malkavian prank in a Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebook I was reading, so it's hardly a serious suggestion.
I do occasionally wonder if you could make sweeping changes in a gradual enough way for regular users to not so much not mind as largely not notice, under the frog/frying pan principle. Sadly for this wondering, Shadowcat's a consultancy so the sites I work on with enough traffic for it to be interesting all belong to other people :)
Objectively I think it is a change for the better - but it does feel just a bit off.
Many websites have these issues. People cried foul to Fark when they did a redesign. An employee was fired for saying 'You will get over it'. People did.
I wonder how many others feel this way.
It was a very brave thing of them to do this because they must have realized it would lead to some backlash, but I really can't see how they could have done so differently anyway.
They needed to 'get with the times' again in a way that gives them room enough to get back to small changes, think of it as a spring housecleaning. Give it four weeks and everybody will be used to the new site and this problem will go away.
As things come on the web google is still minimalist, only a little less so than last week.
A bigger issue with google is the creeping pollution of the search results for 'web' searches with more and more non-relevant links to googles own sites and/or paid links.
Go to preferences -> Default Search -> Manage -> Add a new search engine
The enter this as the search URL "http://www.google.com/search?hl=all&q=%s (enter whatever for name and keyword) and make it the default search engine.
I hadn't seen nor used the Google start page for... years?
Incidentally, anyone know if there is a way to generate a url for a Twitter search? The one I had been using stopped working recently.
The Twitter url doesn't work for me, incidentally. I get a Twitter search page but with no query or search results.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com%20g...
You just need a form with action="http://www.google.com and a text input of name "q", assuming you only care about English-only.
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all
My question is how to make a web form that produces the same results as the page above.
i.e. put a hidden input with a hl=all in the form.
(I make no warranties about this hack continuing to work past next week.)
<form action="http://google.com/search" method=get>
<input type=text value="" name=q size=30>
<input type=submit value="Go">
<input name=hl type=hidden value="all">
</form> <form action="http://search.twitter.com/search" method="get">
<input type="text" size="30" name="q"/>
</form>And I see that clicking on the posted link has now changed the default appearance of Google every time I use it. :(
Example: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=python+441+Art...
I wish they would do 2 things:
1. Make sure the original message -- say from the original mailing list, newsgroup, or forum -- is listed first. Not necessarily #1, but above all the scrapers.
2. Consolidate the archivers (mail-archive.com, derkeiler.com, pubbs.net, etc.) into a single entry, perhaps with sublistings or something.
Now where's the Google suggestion box?
But yes, we know. There are Googlers that read HN, you know. :-)
For example, on the old version of the site, navigating to Page 2 highlights the second 'o' in red, and the number 2 in red.
On the redesigned site the same scenario shows a number 2 with the same color as the other numbers and bold as its only distinguishing attribute.
At a glance I find it harder to quickly identify the current page, and I suppose this would give less experienced users even more trouble.
My behavior is more usually to look at page 1, and if what I'm looking for isn't there, adjust the search terms.
I think the new numbers are pretty easy to see though.
Aside: I swear there used to be an option on the Google home page for a (possibly very brief) time circa 1999–2000 that allowed you to select the number of results per page. But the Wayback Machine makes it appear otherwise, because a cursory glance at the archives shows that the select box only appeared pre-2000 on google.stanford.edu. But I don't think I ever googled from that domain. I might be wrong on the last point, though. There's absolutely no way I'm wrong about the select box appearing on the home page, though, because the removal of it was the entire reason I began clicking through to "Advanced Search", so that I could change the value to 100.
Open Terminal
cd /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/
cp Safari Safari.bak
perl -pi -e 's/rls=en/hl=all/g' Safari
cd ~/Library/Safari/
mv SearchProviders.plist.signed SearchProviders.plist.signed.bakSure the "If it aint broke, don't fix it" mentality makes a lot of sense, but at the same time if companies aren't innovating, changing things and pushing the limits, we'll never know what else is possible!
Using it to justify not listening to customers would make more sense if Henry Ford made his business successful by selling horsewagons.