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Introducing the new Google+

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Re: Introducing the new Google+

#281

Post by abraham »

eagsalazar2 wrote: post #42

Most irritating detail is the interaction where there is what looks like a select box (little down arrow and everything) but it expands when you hover over it after a small delay. The delay ends up being the most irritating thing because it is just enough time for me to accidentally click where the drop down used to be and is now a home button! It is small but this gets me every time and it is just such a gross usabi…

The "Home v" hover menu is the old design and was replaced in the new design with Google's typical hamburger sidebar.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#282

Post by abraham »

Osiris wrote: post #102

I really don't like multi-column layouts. It's impossible to read. arstechnica is a really good example. There are three columns, each with blocks that are different sizes. So, I end up reading all the headlines from the left column, scrolling back to the stop, reading the second column, then scrolling back up for the third column. I've tried to use Google+ on my Android device and the experience is awful. You get a…

Settings has a "Restrict stream to single column layout on all screen sizes" option.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#284

Post by dredmorbius »

rhizome wrote: post #213
mikeash wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not make your window narrower?

Someday you may encounter a person who has trouble zeroing in on a 4px resize handle.

So much this.

I'm spending a great deal of time with a colleague who has significant visual impairments and who, while a domain expert in their own areas, is neither particularly proficient with computer technology nor do they wish to be (there are certain prerogatives which come with age).

Hiding tools for compensating for poor accessibility design behind small, faint, hard-to-see, only-sometimes-visible, and/or other graphical elements is sheer madness.

Case in point: recent builds of Firefox have a "reader mode" feature, which I use heavily (my own visual capabilities are largely intact, but, well, 99.99966% of Web design is crap).

The icon:

1. Is faint.

2. Appears at a corner of the navigation box. E.g., it's not at a Fitts point (top of screen, corner).

3. Worst and most unforgivably: it only appears AFTER a page has fully loaded, doesn't appear on all pages, and cannot be specified as a default (e.g., always open pages in Readability mode, unless broken).

From a UI/UX standpoint for someone who is already visually disabled this is unforgivable.

(Yes, I've submitted feedback to Mozilla on this.)

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#285

Post by abraham »

cjcenizal wrote: post #5

Ironically, this blog post doesn't contain an actual link to Google+.

The blog post has seven links to Google+. They just go to specific pieces or streams of content which are arguably more useful to demonstrating what's good about the new design.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#286

Post by krapp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #280
krapp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing i've found odd about HN is that the only really customizable feature for logged in account seems to be the background color of the top bar, after you get enough karma. Just imagine how many complaints people wouldn't be making if they could adjust the default text size, line height or some other colors?

Yeah. I don't really understand why this feature even exists. Maybe it's some artifact of HN's history, pg experimenting with that particular part of HN's engine in Arc or something? Because this and all the other things you've mentioned can be accomplished by user setting up an additional CSS for the website client-side, with an implicit assumption that audience here is generally smart enough to figure out how to do…

Back in the day, Myspace would embed any arbitrary CSS you pasted into your profile. I'm not suggesting Hacker News make itself that hackable (it would be hilarious, though, if they added that "feature" to the thread submission form) but it seems like it should be a bit more hackable than it is, given its nature.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#287

Post by mgraybosch »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #251
phaemon wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost. I agree more with this: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

>"You're a fucking moron if you use default browser styles." >- Eleanor Roosevelt Why are the default styles so bad?

The default styles are lousy because there's no reasonable standard on how pristine HTML5 untouched by CSS should look. So browser developers make assumptions because they figure everybody will just use CSS anyway.

Fortunately, we have stuff like normalize.css (https://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/) nowadays.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#288

Post by markdown »

dredmorbius wrote: post #218
markdown wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The card layout is generally big no-no in design community. Pinterest.

A site I hate, avoid like the plague, and block via /etc/hosts where possible. But thanks for the example.

I'm sure Pinterest appreciates that. Users outside the target market drain resources for no benefit.

Re: Introducing the new Google+

#289

Post by yitchelle »

rogerbinns wrote: post #108
yitchelle wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a service that converts your G+ feed into a rss feed, would you use it?

There were a few, but none worked reliably at all. I do use a external service that converts twitter to RSS (something they dropped a while back), but also have to redo those every year or so as the various services break or stop functioning. The thing about RSS is that it is a good match for providing a feed. By Google not providing that sort of thing, you have to use their user interface. Others can't try experimen…

A service like this will always be a band aid solution. You are at the mercy of the provider of the source data, and they can easily screw you up (as you have pointed out.)
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