How Google did their barrel roll trick | Hacker News Reader

How Google did their barrel roll trick

acumenholdings.com

58 pointsbriansage16 comments

Out of curiosity: why is the fact that this effect was achieved with a few simple lines of CSS3 (whether it was keyframe animations or simply a rotate transition doesn't really matter) front page news? Maybe I'm just jaded because I'm a UI engineer--but the "trick" wasn't particularly impressive (though it was quite amusing--and would have been even more so if they'd used HTML5 audio to get Slippy Toad in there).

Front-page with only 40 points after 2 hours. It doesn't seem like it'll stay there for very long, the HN algorithm just gives a lot of weight to early + fast risers.

And yeah, a Slippy sound-bite would have made it another level of awesome :D

I'm surprised by this too, but as I recall the same thing happened when a bunch of sites were discovered to have the Konami code. Leveraging nerd nostalgia = big return.

To me the more interesting part is how Google has managed to maintain a sense of fun and a corporate attitude that allows fun hacks to make it to the world. I'd love to know what the process was from engineer ideation (I Presume). Past product, and qa. Who said "go" and was it a hard process or one that google is optimized for.

To me the more interesting part is how Google has managed to maintain a sense of fun and a corporate attitude that allows fun hacks to make it to the world.

Too bad that (to me at least) Google is now firmly on the side of extremely non-fun companies. Mostly I'm referring to their no nick names on G+ stubborn dickishnes.

On the other side of the coin, I see it as a cynical marketing move specifically designed to appeal to nostalgia create the very impression you had, that they "maintain a sense of fun and a corporate attitude that allows fun hacks to make it to the world." Google is often successful at appealing to geek humor and ideals in order to gain fans, even as they do things that violate those ideals.

What, the barrel roll thing? I've gotta say, you're looking at it incorrectly.

It was implemented by a single engineer who thought it would be a humorous thing to do without considering marketing at all.

Or did you mean that them allowing this is the cynical marketing move? It'd make more sense, but I don't think I'd agree with it.

It's actually wrong. Google used CSS keyframes http://pastie.org/2810243

Plenty of acumen to explaining the trick by demonstrating it on your own site search pages. Nicely piggybacked :)

I had to type "do a barrel roll" without quotes in google. e.g. http://www.google.co.uk/#q=do+a+barrel+roll

As expected, Sage is on point again with this one. Great job buddy! :)

I only had to type "do a ba" in chrome before completion triggered the transform.

And this one is not blocked in Opera.

Use the boost to get through!

Your father helped me like that, too!

Thanks for the comments :)

Your father helped me like that, too!

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