New Google Plus design: I dislike it | Hacker News Reader

New Google Plus design: I dislike it

dendory.net

7 pointsdendory10 comments

As a designer, I'm a bit confused by this criticism. The reason why I hate Facebook so much, is that because every single space is jam-packed with text and content. Negative space is important to give some visual space to breathe. I like the new design and google+ in general because it feels simple, clean, etc. Do you complain about google's search engine page being too simple as well? Maybe it's just subjective, but I like the empty space.

It's not empty space, it's wasted space. Google Plus was brought out as a site to share our stuff, and see what others shared. Now, that's 25% of the real estate. The rest is an invitation to other Google products like Search, Mail and Chat, an incentive to use hangouts, a list of trending topics, a list of unknown people just in case we happen to k ow them, an incentive to invite others to join Google Plus...

+Remus Morosanu posted on + that Facebook wastes lots of space too. In fact, lots of websites are wasting tons of space that content could go in, but only get away with it because the content is center aligned.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111674016668995132288/posts/fTDU...

Screenshot: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XXjI-OOfgBA/T4XRa9n14DI/A...

Ya but if a site wastes space by putting ads for their own stuff, we expect it. If Facebook or Google do it, on sites they expect us to share our stuff on, that's not the same thing.

I agree that it's wasted space, and that is something they could fix, but it seems like it happens all the time nowadays. It is more obvious once you scroll down a bit on Google+. But overall their design is cool and it feels more like an app than a website.

You can also create your own custom stylesheet to fix the whitespace now.

For Chrome Users: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oiaejidbmkiecgbjei...

For Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ (I think?)

I appreciate how the new design makes a lot of Google+ features first class citizens. Chat, Circles and hangouts can be easily seen and accessed in this new design which makes for a more enjoyable social experience for me as I browse.

I've got to agree. The fact that games and pages are sort of put on the back burner (but can be changed by user preference) really shows that Google cares about nailing the core experience. They've done a great job so far of keeping the stream one of the most pure places for information on the internet, as far as pollution goes. They didn't take the Facebook route of pushing the games section front and center.

Note that + doesn't have ads either.

Vic Gondutra said they've reserved the white space for an upcoming feature.

Ads.

He specifically said it wasn't ads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com