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Google’s look, evolved

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Re: Google’s look, evolved

#371

Post by yamaneko »

f0under wrote: post #328
ljk wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does adding "?" work at getting a different logo? not a web guy here

Anything after "?" is a query parameter that the server can read and then apply additional logic to for a response. In this case, they have code that responds to new logo and returns the new logo instead of the previous one.

It's actually not querying anything, since it works for any query you pass. What happens is that you're bypassing cache because you're loading a different page, as explained by sirn above.

https://www.google.com/favicon.ico?anyquery

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#372

Post by kuschku »

krick wrote: post #363
DanBC wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.

To be fair, are there good web maps? OSM is much worse, for instance. Google maps are pretty usable by comparison.

I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess.

Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly.

And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2]

[1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#373

Post by kuschku »

qq66 wrote: post #206
DanBC wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps is incredibly frustrating to use. I can't understand what user testing they do.

What changes would you make to Google Maps, with a basic set of assumptions? (let's say, you can't dramatically increase the cost, you can't hurt Google revenue sources, and you have a team of ~20 engineers to work on the changes).

Here some of my current complaints:

I (and all my friends) switched to here.com maps after Google has horribly old (2005) data, has a horrible UI, and is generally unusable. In many cities in my region whole districts are completely missing from the maps[1], MapMaker is not available, and in general it’s just a huge mess.

Even worse: It loads so slowly (compared to here.com or bing.com or openstreetmap.org) that sometimes it takes several minutes to load an area while competitors load instantly.

And then there are cities where Google tried to add the new 3D buildings, but the result is so horrible that the satellite view is not usable anymore, for example Vienna [2]

[1]: Compare https://goo.gl/maps/e4awg https://www.here.com/?map=54.35326,10.0714,17,satellite [2]: https://goo.gl/maps/LUHiN

------

And here some suggestions:

- Allow the user to turn of 3D buildings. They are annoying, kill loading times, and are buggy and just a mess of polygons that looks more like abstract art than buildings.

- Use recent satellite imagery. When Bing and Here maps have images that are 10 (!) years newer than what Google uses, it’s just inacceptable

- Stop having a UI where everything changes while people click on it – Google’s own guidelines say that you should keep stuff predictable. Especially due to the slow loading times people often try to click somewhere, while they try to click some box moves, and they click something completely different. This is extremely frustrating, I’d even begin to call it clickjacking.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#374

Post by lukestevens »

nostrademons wrote: post #344
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of our biggest problems was that since we tried to change everything at once, the metrics went haywire Isn't that the problem with empirical methods in general? They are great for measuring the effect of small simple things (like small changes to a web page), but are much less effective in measuring bigger things (like say, programming language A vs. programming language B).

Absolutely. Business is an interesting field because you derive a fairly large advantage from being correct about reality, but that advantage counts for nothing if you're so slow that somebody else changes the reality while you're figuring it out.

That is a very succinct way of putting it, thank you.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#375

Post by kuschku »

alooPotato wrote: post #227
bradleyjg wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nine dot menu instead of a small header row was a terrible change. First because it is an extra click every time for a commonly used task and second because no one had any clue what the hell nine dots were supposed to mean. A friend of mine that worked at google told me the official name is "app drawer". I have no idea how that's supposed to look like a drawer. More generally the entire move from words to pictogr…

Really? That seems smart to me. How often do you use the links in that drawer? Seems better to remove all that text up top and replace with a small icon for something that is rarely used.

Before, I actually used the top menu to navigate from one Google service to another.

Now, I just rely on Firefox’ autocompletion of the URL bar, or I just use Thunderbird instead of GMail, or here.com maps instead of Google maps.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#377

Post by kuschku »

tempestn wrote: post #274
dkrich wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that your gut instinct or is there research to suggest that that's the case? My personal process for using Google (not saying everyone is the same, but...) goes something like this: 1. Type "g" into the address bar 2. Press enter, because www.google.com auto-populates at that point 3. Start typing my query while the animation of the day is loading 4. Press enter 5. Review the results

Why not just run the search straight from your browser's address bar or search field?

Because, for good reason, not everyone has that set to Google?

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#378

Post by kuschku »

mrxd wrote: post #124
mahouse wrote: post #20

I'll be the first one to say it: I liked the older better. There was literally nothing wrong with it, it did not look dated at all.

> There was literally nothing wrong with it, it did not look dated at all. It definitely didn't look dated. That's because no other tech company in the world imitated Google's choice to use a font inspired by 15th century typography that literally looks like it was created with a calligraphy brush.

Yahoo just redesigned their logo to look more like calligraphy.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#379

Post by kuschku »

bduerst wrote: post #146
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to do everything with SVGs is admittedly nice. But if Google was worried about performance on small screens and in low-bandwidth contexts, we wouldn't have Material design, as it's animations have quite a bloated effect on performance. Particularly on devices with low power/low processing. Page loads on desktops for some Google sites are up to ten seconds now. But yes, most redesigns are done just for the…

There's Material Design Light, which seems to work pretty well for low-performing browsers: http://www.getmdl.io/index.html

Doesn’t help with Google Maps, or Inbox, which take ages (literally, sometimes half a minute) to load and still lagg forever.

Re: Google’s look, evolved

#380

Post by kuschku »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #360
leavjenn wrote: post #80

Not only the logo, they have changed the size of search box: http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-more-height-to-their...

And not for the first time! I remember when the buttons and search field had your OS's default button height and styling. Those days are sadly long-gone.

Fear not! You can have the 1999 logo and search experience again right now! http://www.google.com/custom
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