4 ms·

There's no + symbol on the new tab icon in Chrome 17

26 points by wgx 15y ago

yummies 15y ago
i'd predict this will never be reverted. it's another example of google's infallible design principles being bestowed upon the people. my favorite justification of removing the plus sign is that "it's too jarring".
- dylanpyle 15y ago
  Yeah I've been on the dev release channel so this has been the case for me for quite some time - I personally quite like it, though I do understand that there's some potential confusion for new users. Certainly wouldn't describe the old plus as "jarring" though.
benjlang 15y ago
Been looking for that symbol for days. Google, you fail, again.
- sp332 15y ago
  Really? I noticed it was missing (a few day ago since I generally use FF), and liked it. It looks a lot cleaner now, it's nicer to look at and doesn't feel like it's asking for my attention the way the old one did.
gbaygon 15y ago
I thought it was a UI glitch too. Lookin closer the button looks like an "small empty tab", so maybe the designers decided that the + was redundant?
- Michiel 15y ago
  It doesn't look anything like a tab to me. It has a different shape, size and placement.
dmoy 15y ago
I wish I could just get rid of the button completely. I realize that people will likely need something there by default, but after learning how to use CTRL+T to open a new tab, I have no need for that little button. I'm pretty sure Opera lets you get rid of it, but I can't really remember.
herf 15y ago
IE has had an icon-less tab forever. But it is connected to the tab bar, which makes more sense. I thought this was a bug, too.
meemo 15y ago
That button never looked right to me, but this looks worse. I even reinstalled Chrome. This makes me wonder about how much thought and attention they give to UI details.
vinayan3 15y ago
This is so stupid. I can't believe people are so focused on such a minor change. Seriously this isn't the end of the world. All that time spent fussing about this button could have been put to better use elsewhere.
- chrisdroukas 15y ago
  From whose perspective, though? The new tab button should be really obvious in a production browser, and in Chrome 17 it isn't. If this is a change suggested by the Plus team, it's a bad change. Usability first.
  - pasbesoin 15y ago
    Chrome is being used now by "average people". In addition to her personal use (which I started), my mother's school system newly mandates using Chrome. In addition to her own confusion, add mine when I'm telling her on the phone to look for the "plus" icon at the right, and it's no longer there. I've had similar issues with Google's Calendar product UI, for example. They just change it, and adopt non-standard and to my mind often rather unobvious controls -- users be damned. (I won't start on my parents' use of Android phones...) TL;DR: You want market share, you'd better make sure that market can figure you out.
hollerith 15y ago
My guess is that the motivation for this change is the same as the motivation for eliminating the + operator from Google Search's textual interface. (Namely, that it was requested by the folks who manage the Google Plus brand.)
rogerbinns 15y ago
They've missed the big functionality change in Chrome 17. Everyone knows that Chrome puts each tab in a different process. However that isn't actually true - if you open a tab from a page (eg middle click, ctrl click) then the tab is opened using the same process as the current page. Those of us who visit HN and Reddit front pages opening lots of links to read later will find all of them sharing the same process. In Chrome 17 they set the maximum memory use for the process to 1GB. As usage approaches that amount the garbage collector runs and will eventually hit 100% CPU time since it will not find anything to free but the process has run out of memory. In Chrome 16 the limit was 2GB which took at least twice the effort to hit, but still was just as annoying. There is no way of fixing this problem I can find (the --process-per-tab option doesn't do it). (You can kill the process and/or reload the browser but that loses state in pages.) I'm on a 64 bit machine with 16GB ram and 8 cpu cores, so having the browser stuck at 6% of my ram and 12% of my cpu is annoying.
dlwh 15y ago
I suspect this might have at least a little to do with the Google+ rebranding. Remember how they removed the + operator from search?

26 points by wgx 15y ago

i'd predict this will never be reverted. it's another example of google's infallible design principles being bestowed upon the people. my favorite justification of removing the plus sign is that "it's too jarring".

dylanpyle 15y ago
Yeah I've been on the dev release channel so this has been the case for me for quite some time - I personally quite like it, though I do understand that there's some potential confusion for new users. Certainly wouldn't describe the old plus as "jarring" though.

benjlang 15y ago

Been looking for that symbol for days. Google, you fail, again.

sp332 15y ago
Really? I noticed it was missing (a few day ago since I generally use FF), and liked it. It looks a lot cleaner now, it's nicer to look at and doesn't feel like it's asking for my attention the way the old one did.

gbaygon 15y ago

I thought it was a UI glitch too. Lookin closer the button looks like an "small empty tab", so maybe the designers decided that the + was redundant?

Michiel 15y ago
It doesn't look anything like a tab to me. It has a different shape, size and placement.

dmoy 15y ago

I wish I could just get rid of the button completely. I realize that people will likely need something there by default, but after learning how to use CTRL+T to open a new tab, I have no need for that little button. I'm pretty sure Opera lets you get rid of it, but I can't really remember.

herf 15y ago

IE has had an icon-less tab forever. But it is connected to the tab bar, which makes more sense. I thought this was a bug, too.

meemo 15y ago

That button never looked right to me, but this looks worse. I even reinstalled Chrome. This makes me wonder about how much thought and attention they give to UI details.

vinayan3 15y ago

This is so stupid. I can't believe people are so focused on such a minor change. Seriously this isn't the end of the world. All that time spent fussing about this button could have been put to better use elsewhere.

chrisdroukas 15y ago
From whose perspective, though? The new tab button should be really obvious in a production browser, and in Chrome 17 it isn't. If this is a change suggested by the Plus team, it's a bad change. Usability first.
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  Chrome is being used now by "average people". In addition to her personal use (which I started), my mother's school system newly mandates using Chrome. In addition to her own confusion, add mine when I'm telling her on the phone to look for the "plus" icon at the right, and it's no longer there. I've had similar issues with Google's Calendar product UI, for example. They just change it, and adopt non-standard and to my mind often rather unobvious controls -- users be damned. (I won't start on my parents' use of Android phones...) TL;DR: You want market share, you'd better make sure that market can figure you out.

hollerith 15y ago

My guess is that the motivation for this change is the same as the motivation for eliminating the + operator from Google Search's textual interface. (Namely, that it was requested by the folks who manage the Google Plus brand.)

rogerbinns 15y ago

They've missed the big functionality change in Chrome 17. Everyone knows that Chrome puts each tab in a different process. However that isn't actually true - if you open a tab from a page (eg middle click, ctrl click) then the tab is opened using the same process as the current page. Those of us who visit HN and Reddit front pages opening lots of links to read later will find all of them sharing the same process. In Chrome 17 they set the maximum memory use for the process to 1GB. As usage approaches that amount the garbage collector runs and will eventually hit 100% CPU time since it will not find anything to free but the process has run out of memory. In Chrome 16 the limit was 2GB which took at least twice the effort to hit, but still was just as annoying. There is no way of fixing this problem I can find (the --process-per-tab option doesn't do it). (You can kill the process and/or reload the browser but that loses state in pages.) I'm on a 64 bit machine with 16GB ram and 8 cpu cores, so having the browser stuck at 6% of my ram and 12% of my cpu is annoying.

dlwh 15y ago

I suspect this might have at least a little to do with the Google+ rebranding. Remember how they removed the + operator from search?