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Comment by zaidf | Hacker News Reader

Since we are on the topic of google search, let me nominate google instant for the worst piece of UI implementation ever.

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Here's what one of the designers of Instant thinks about the UX (they tested it): http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/1416/is-google-instant...

I'm curious why you think that. I find Google Instant useful sometimes but more often irritating. It's jarring the way it insists on popping up at you. More interestingly, I find I'm acutely aware of all its tiny lags, the way it slows down and breaks up the simple experience of using a web browser. That's interesting because its speed is, in absolute terms, incredible; an engineering triumph by any standard. And yet all I notice are the ways in which it isn't instant.

I find it very irritating for precisely the same reasons. The general instability caused by the momentary screen freeze and the breakage of back button(when all the hacks don't work) is extremely annoying. I was literally banging my head against my desk yesterday until I finally found a way to disable it for the duration of the session(no way to disable it forever).

Really for me it is trying to solve a problem I never had. I am not outrightly against making things even better than they are - but in my view, the solution has to be better without debate. The fact that there is a very proactive debate against Google Instant tells me it is far from being the finest piece of work by Google. Considering search is the heart of google, Google Instant should not have been pushed down our throats. It is at best something that should have spent a few months in Google Labs.

You can disable Google Instant in your search preferences: http://www.google.com/preferences

What browser are you seeing this instability on?

I find it really irritating for query refinement. Often I will do a broad search and notice a new term in the result snippets that I want to use in my search. When the term is a name or some other hard to spell word (or phrase), I like to be able to type it in the search box while I'm looking at it in the results. Instant ruins that for me, so I always turn it off.

I'd appreciate a way to get back to the last 'view'. Very often I type what I want to type, but while I type Google instant loads the search results. I read them with at a single glance and find something that interests me...however my fingers kept typing and before I can click on the link that got my attention, Google loads the view that is pertinent to the stuff I typed in, and now I don't know how to get back, because I was looking at the instant search results.

Besides the obvious hyperbole (I guarantee you've made something worse in the UI department), Instant's been a massive hit. I'm sorry that you don't enjoy it, but there's always a sub-set of users that will resist any change whatsoever, even if it's a massive improvement.

What are the problems you are having with it? After the change to Instant I didn't perceive any change, i.e. I didn't encounter any problems.

It gives me nausea. Anyway, it's not that helpful, either. I don't want to be distracted by "A", "Ar", "Arc*" etc. results when I search for "Archaeology" , because, supposedly, I know what I'm searching for.

You can turn it off in search settings. (Under the gear.)

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The biggest problem with google instant isn't the flickering or any of the issues the author of the post addresses. It is with general usability such as using the back key(sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't), freezing of the screen for few moments and general instability it causes with the workflow.

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