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The next version of DuckDuckGo

next.duckduckgo.com

291–300 of 331 posts

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#291
post #105

I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine and have had a positive experience using it. This redesign incorporates two of the worst design trends today: very low contrast text and gratuitously, obnoxiously large fixed headers. I dislike fixed headers on any non-phone/tablet UI because almost all laptop and desktop screens are widescreen. Fixed position elements on the sides of the screen make much more sense, altho…

Thanks for the feedback! Our current version also has a fixed header, and that can be turned off in the settings, which we plan to make work in this next version as well. Noted on contrast. We will look into it more -- that's exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping to get.

I agree with the people saying the new look is quite good, but it does need a couple of changes.

Contrast has been mentioned, it's better on your "cards" (top toolbar that appears on some searches) than on the general results. Other than that, I'm not sure your choice of font is very good. It's not quite crisp enough to easily scan and read lots of text at once. I tried switching to Helvetica Neue instead of Proxima and things instantly looked more readable.

Overall a good step in the right direction though.

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#292
post #95
post #2

Hi all, thanks for checking it out and we're looking forward to your feedback! This next version of DuckDuckGo is in public beta. Here's the post about it I just made: https://duck.co/forum/thread/5726/duckduckgo-reimagined-and-... There are still a lot known issues that we're still working through before we can make the transition. I'm sure this thread will uncover more :)

The auto-suggest feature feels like a step backwards in terms of privacy: - it indicates that there's a fairly thorough recording of searches going on, and acknowledges a reasonable possibility of keypress-by-keypress recording, and - it doesn't work as well as google's version which accounts for local variation, and which formed part of my decision to reject google in favour of ddg. Overall this feature creeps me ou…

Fully agree, these were the same things that popped in my head when I saw it. Though I have to say autocomplete for !commands is an excellent addition.

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#293
post #249

I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine and have had a positive experience using it. This redesign incorporates two of the worst design trends today: very low contrast text and gratuitously, obnoxiously large fixed headers. I dislike fixed headers on any non-phone/tablet UI because almost all laptop and desktop screens are widescreen. Fixed position elements on the sides of the screen make much more sense, altho…

You seem to completely miss the new features. On the search page, click the hamburger icon on the top right. There you can adjust the fonts (to some extent), colors, the position of the header (make it scrolling again), and many more things. All of this is impossible with old DDG, or Google, or Bing, or Yandex, etc. I wish people that have time to write 3 long paragraphs of complaints actually have tried what they ar…

Except that the huge header covers the settings and only a few are available to me, and I can't see the tabs.

My ideal defaults: Header should be shorter. Contrast should be higher. The O-click box should be hidden and only its tabs should be visible. It should use as much horizontal space as possible (wonder if they plan to add something on the right side). A little bit less spacing between results would be great.

Even though they seem to be nice people, I don't trust them, and I don't believe that the url they are showing is the location where I will go if I click on the link (I don't trust the status bar either), so they should remove that last line from the result and add the icon and the domain (that's ok) to the main title.

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#294
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback! Our current version also has a fixed header, and that can be turned off in the settings, which we plan to make work in this next version as well. Noted on contrast. We will look into it more -- that's exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping to get.

I'm in the camp that actually likes the new look. It conveys a modern minimalist view while the extras just get out of your way. I've been mostly against flat design for a number of reasons but IMO, you've achieved a great design. I really like the minimalism of the hamburger button. Again, everything just gets out of your way. Perhaps enlarging the font-size of the search result snippets might help with the contrast…

Adding my brick to this pile... I like the new design better too. Especially the search results page. The lower contrast is one of the features I like actually, feels a bit less aggressive, but the font changes and the general decrease in aggressive red are particularly pleasing.

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#296
post #52

Based in US, the line "The search engine that doesn't track you" means nothing.

Not every company in the US is actively colluding with the government. Assuming DDG is telling the truth about not keeping any logs, then its service should be no less secure than if it were situated in any other country.

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#297
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback! Our current version also has a fixed header, and that can be turned off in the settings, which we plan to make work in this next version as well. Noted on contrast. We will look into it more -- that's exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping to get.

Personally, I'm okay with the contrast side of things. But I do prefer it when the main content of the page is centered as opposed to left-aligned.

First thing I said was "nooo they've moved it back over". I love(d) the centered results.

PLEASE bring them back!

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#298
Where is "Try this search on:" box that used to be on the right hand side? I found it extremely useful.

Also the dropdown in search button that allowed to, say, sort the results by date. (I often forget query parameters)

Overall I like the esthetic direction ddg is taking, unfortunately I found two good features missing.

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#299
post #130
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback! Our current version also has a fixed header, and that can be turned off in the settings, which we plan to make work in this next version as well. Noted on contrast. We will look into it more -- that's exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping to get.

+1 on the low contrast comment. It's all the rage nowadays, but this one of those trends that I think people will look back on in a few years and say, "How did anyone ever think that was a good idea?"

lower contrast is not bad, I don't want all text to be #000 and #fff, but the contrast on DuckDuckGo is too low. As it says here your text should be as readable as #333 on #fff: http://ia.net/blog/100e2r/

There are also some WCAG guidelines on contrast.

Here are some contrast checkers: http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ http://www.checkmycolours.com/

Re: The next version of DuckDuckGo

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not on-map, that's hidden behind a click. osm.org/copyright makes it very clear that the attribution needs to be on-map. You don't see Google permitting people to hide their brand away like that!

Apple does this too in all of their uses of OSM in their maps. There is some OSM community discussion on the UX behind this here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21769

Apple's maps are not just OpenStreetMap - there's a lot of other data sources in it too.

For the OSM data Apple do use, I think it's quite old OSM data from 2010-2011 or something. As far as I remember, they used that because the license changed after that, so I believe that's under different terms.

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