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I think the dark grey bar across the top is a big problem for a few UX & psychological reasons. First, it's mentally oppressive. The black bar at the top is li
by flyosity 15y ago
I think the dark grey bar across the top is a big problem for a few UX & psychological reasons.
First, it's mentally oppressive. The black bar at the top is like working in a room with a low ceiling painted black all day. It makes you feel boxed in.
Next, lighter colors that exist in the sky (blues, greys) tend to work better at the top of interfaces. If you consider the screen to be your full field of vision and relate it to what your eyes normally see when outside, the top-most area of the screen is "the sky". Making the absolute top part of a webpage black makes me think about a black sky which is ominous and indicates a storm is coming.
Finally, it just looks unfriendly and robotic. Blue is a more humanistic color and is more pleasing. I can't think of a worse choice for this newly-redesigned top bar than the dark grey/black they decided on.
- nooneelse 15y ago> "I can't think of a worse choice for this newly-redesigned top bar than the dark grey/black they decided on." Really? Did you try much, because... danger red, hot pink, puke green... that took like three seconds to think up. Ergo, I think you are engaging in at least quite a bit of hyperbole here, leading me to consider dubious pretty much everything else you said.
- jimmyjim 15y agoIt should be okay in this forum for him to mean "worse choice within the realm of reason" when he says "worse choice" without explicitly saying it.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoIt really isn't that serious.
- lukifer 15y agoI agree, I find it a major eyesore.
- VMG 15y agome too, but I wonder how much of it is familiarity
- rgraham 15y agoMe too. The other day I was looking across the room at a box with a dark-colored top flap and I felt deeply claustrophobic and acutely oppressed. I shed a single tear in mere contemplation.
- vorg 15y ago> lighter colors that exist in the sky (blues, greys) tend to work better at the top of interfaces Yep. The old blue on white background strip was easy to look at. The new color never looked good on Blogspot. Sometimes a single bad design choice can tip the balance between making something pleasant to use, or not. An example: I upgraded my version of Open Office a month ago, for the first time in 3 years. There was one single change they made with the margin color in the word processor so when the left cursor is sitting at the left margin, I can't see it very easily. Because I move around documents a lot, and let the cursor sit while rereading, this is quite irritating. After a month, I've started pasting OO document text into Wordpad for editing, and repasting them into Open Office when complete. I sometimes wonder if a spy for Microsoft was behind that margin color change. Another example: I only started using Open Office because Wordpad was similarly crippled by Microsoft a few years ago (starting with XP service pack 2, I think). Whenever you save a document, the page view changes so the cursor's at the top, also irritating after no problems with versions up to then. But I'm using it again because it seems a little less irritating than that Open Office change, which I can't find any way to fix in the menus. I suspect in that case Microsoft deliberately crippled it to force users to fork out for MS Office. So perhaps this change will tip the balance for some users who want a new search engine. Perhaps a spy for Baidu was behind the change, or someone who's "family back home" has been influenced by Baidu.
- monkeypizza 15y agowhy don't you just change the margin color in OO?
- vorg 15y agoAfter 10 minutes of searching, I found that turning off Text Boundaries in the View menu solves that particular problem. I couldn't find any way to change either the margin or cursor color. I stand by my comment about the little things, e.g a non-changeable bad menu bar color in Google, prodding users over to Bing or Baidu.
- icebraining 15y agoPersonally, I like dark bars, since they contrast with the webpage, so I use a dark Firefox theme. Now Google's bar seems just another Firefox toolbar here, it almost seems customized ;)
- vibrunazo 15y agoDark colors use less energy. Someone please think about the environment! :)
- natesm 15y agoIt's the other way around, unless it's still the 90s. Can't go any deeper, so here goes: LCDs are clear by default with a big light behind them. You can see this on any Apple laptop, the glowing logo is just the backlight (watch it fade as you lower brightness or try shining a flashlight through it). White (clear) is the default state, so it takes power to make a color. Think of an LCD watch, all of the text is black because LCDs can't create light (those are LEDs). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-black-is http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fic... Of course, it's a minuscule difference, since I'm guessing that the giant light probably uses most of the power, not the actual LCD. This is the opposite of CRTs (hence the "90s" comment), which do actually create brightness per-pixel.
- malnourish 15y agoI think they could simply offer a choice, much like they do with the background. However I think it should default to the light blue and be saved as a cookie for those who prefer not to be logged into gmail all the time.
- Lewisham 15y agoI am sure a Chrome extension will appear soon that will let you switch it around.
- watty 15y agoI can't tell if you're being sarcastic or these are genuine concerns. Black is not my favorite design color but I think it works well for Google and contrasts well in this case. The black bar at the top is like working at night time, Google (the content) being the light that guides the way. Blue bars work well on the bottom, giving the feeling of floating peacefully in the ocean, yet at the top cause distress - as if the user is drowning. Yes, I'm making this shit up and trying to sound as ridiculous as OP.
- danilocampos 15y agoAnd they say nerds don't grok design.
- flyosity 15y agoBut at least I get paid lots of money to talk and think about this stuff ;)
- statictype 15y agoFinally, it just looks unfriendly and robotic. Blue is a more humanistic color You nailed it with this one. This is how Google rolls. They prefer generic screens to ones that are designed by humans, because they want to convey the idea that Google is not a curated source of information, but a machine generated unbiased view of the world. I'm generalizing a bit, but this is almost verbatim what was written in In the Plex.
- magicalist 15y agoI too divined this from their choice of black instead of blue. So are we doing astrology next or going straight to phrenology?
- statictype 15y agoHow about reading comprehension? I was replying to the idea that they chose a more 'robotic' design than a 'humanistic' one. And used a piece from a book in which a Googler pretty much said the same thing.
- cpeterso 15y agoGoogle tested 41 shades of black and users preferred #2d2d2d.
- yicai 15y agono offense but this sounds like tasting 41 piles of shit and users preferred horse's. that black bar is so oppressive.
- MikeCapone 15y agoWhen a site that I love and use a lot makes a change, I always try to reserve judgement. If in a month I still don't like it, we'll see. But most times I realize that after I get used to it, it's fine. Google has probably done a fair bit of testing on this...
- yicai 15y agoTesting won't give you any help if you started with the wrong direction. The parent of my comment might be making some joke about the 41 shades of blue that Zeldman said. And quote from him, "There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle." http://www.zeldman.com/2009/03/20/41-shades-of-blue/ http://www.zeldman.com/2009/03/20/41-shades-of-blue/
- xtian 15y agoIt was Doug Bowman, not Zeldman.
- roadnottaken 15y agoThis. Also it's inconsistent with the bar at the top of the Gmail interface. Perhaps this will be rectified/consolidated going forward. Overall it seems like a strange choice for the company that popularized the clean white interface.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Lewisham 15y agoI think this is a rollout issue, and Gmail will adopt it soon, as the rest of the products have. I don't know what "soon" is. (DISCLAIMER: I work at Google, but do not work on consumer products and have no particular info about this).
- thomaslangston 15y agoI wish you wouldn't, or at least give me the option to turn it back to the Gmail "light" style. The black header looks really bad.
- Lewisham 15y agoIf there are things you don't like, the thing to do is send feedback. I can't stress this enough. As it says in the blog post, the changes are coming across months, not days, so there is always time to change course on something given enough feedback.
- alanh 15y agoHow on earth does one send feedback to Google (besides contacting someone like Cutts or Irish)? Serious question.
- jcapote 15y agoYou nailed exactly what I couldn't put my finger on with that black bar.
- josephcooney 15y agoWould a blue bar across the top have been too similar to the chrome used in Windows (since windows 95 it's been a light blue bar across the top, XP 'Luna' had a darker blue bar)? It was only in Vista/Win7 that the blue bar across the top went away from window chrome, but perhaps they wanted to avoid that comparison?
- scelerat 15y agoI find it just plain distracting.
- brianmatter 15y agofunnily enough, apple.com has a dark grey bar across the top but i've never heard you open your mouth about it, and you're quite known to open your mouth about anything. your opinion is pointless and useless because you are such a fanboi
- glhaynes 15y agoYour point is excellent; it's a shame you had to spoil it with all the personal stuff.
- brianmatter 15y agoyeah. good point. sorry
- flyosity 15y agoI whipped up a new design for the top bar and posted the CSS for it in a new HN submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2709736 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2709736