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Google+ gets a redesign
- humanfromearth 14y agoI asked for <pre> support and look what they did instead.
- ed209 14y agoGlad to see Hangouts promoted in this design. Think that's probably the G+ trump card.
- bonyt 14y agoI know that I tend to go to Google+ ONLY for the Hangouts as group video chat, and ignore all the other features of g+.
- ed209 14y agoIt's going to change the face of podcasting, that's for sure. Case in point https://plus.google.com/110701307803962595019/posts https://plus.google.com/110701307803962595019/posts - and maybe that will drag in more users (by interest graph rather than friend/family graph).
- krmmalik 14y agoI genuinely think Google+ has plenty of potential. Google's strategy seems a little more unified in terms of the way the posts are linking to search results, how you can setup circles and the other more niftier features that have been added that Facebook has yet to add. But despite all of that. Something is missing, and i just cant quite put my finger on it.
- Yarnage 14y agoPeople. It's missing people.
- krmmalik 14y agoI've got loads of people on my G+. I feel there's more to it, but i think "Jenius" has hit the nail on the head. I think its third-party app integration that's missing.
- freehunter 14y agoFor me, it's not having a native client for my phone, and not having a good web interface to make up for it. I know Windows Phone doesn't have a large marketshare, but at some point Google+ will have to work with the Metro framework if they want Windows users to notice them in the future. Of course, this could all be made up for if they had good email notifications, which they don't. I have a lot of people I follow on G+ to make up for the lack of people I know using it. With that, conversations from my real friends get lost. I'd love to have email notifications based on which circle someone is in, and have email notifications for everything my friends post.
- debacle 14y agoSoylent+
- instakill 14y agoWhere does this come from? It's on the tip of my tongue...
- jbigelow76 14y agoSoylent Green - "It's people!" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/ (not sure if you were being sarcastic)
- instakill 14y agoI wasn't. I've heard a reference to it elsewhere too. Oh well.
- loceng 14y agoIt's missing community integrations / anchors, though they will come with time.
- gbog 14y ago> Something is missing, and i just cant quite put my finger on it. It is missing "Google". For me Google means plain flat interfaces to best-of-breed tools (search, maps, mail). Many of their new tools (Play, Google +) are trying to resemble an iPad app. That's not Google's DNA, maybe. (Only maybe, because Chrome is the one tool they made that have this sexy look while keeping, for me, the pure Google DNA.) In fact, I think Google may, one day, want give up doing business things. Look, they have plenty of ad money coming in the safe for years. I won't say they don't deserve it but instead of paying very clever people trying to beat Facebook, trying to have a better ad model, scratching their head on how to place an icon on the left (or right? or top?) with which gradient to have the "best" interaction, or even trying to make AR glasses, they could just give up on these childish tasks and just become the real New University of the 21st. Ok, it is off-topic, but think about it: so many great brains, with enough money to pay them. They could be teaching everyone many fields of Science, and beyond, for free. They could scratch their head on how to get more food for less water, and write about it. Each Googler would have to publish one thing every week, on their channel of choice. A central feed would list them. Free access to knowledge. That, would be grand. Nearly as grand as Wikipedia...
- kirinan 14y agoThis is a huge step up for G+ and ultimately may lead to me using it it more. The problem I had with it before was it just wasn't intuitive to do anything with the interface. Now its easy to use, and I know exactly how to do everything without having to think about it. Its good to know that Google is sticking with their strategy of "Internet + you", I think its a good strategy.
- dutchbrit 14y agoWow, huge improvement! Is the cover photo new too? (I haven't checked out G+ in a while.. - copied from FB?!) Looks more "fun" in any case, which is good. (Not saying they have to go completely spastic but this is a good mix)
- dhawalhs 14y agoAs far as I know, Path had done the cover photo thing before Facebook.
- raldi 14y agoWhat's the "cover photo thing"?
- dhawalhs 14y agoThe thing where you get to set a widescreen photo at the top of the profile page. Your profile pic is overlay-ed on top of it.
- geluso 14y agoThe cover photo is to social networks as extra blades are to razors. Features are being stockpiled as if these companies were caught up in an arms race. It seems platform won't risk being caught without equivalencies, without questioning the worth of mimicking in the first place. I'd like to see more confidence shown by social networks. Who's forging ahead when they're all chasing each other's tails?
- jenius 14y agoYeah I really like this, and I also like how google is not giving up. I do think it has potential, and if google can hit it, it will be huge for the company. I think the piece that's missing is integration from other third party services - I would use my google+ account a lot more if I could post to it from apps I use often like twitter, instagram etc. There's always share to twitter in almost every app, which makes it easy. But to share anything to google+ i always have to go all the way to their site, which isn't worth it since many of my friends don't use it anyway.
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- jaysonelliot 14y agoI downvoted you for using the word "ghey" as some sort of perjorative, but the rest of what you're saying isn't doing much to dissuade me from my assessment. (Edit - the OP has edited to remove the word "ghey" since my comment, it was originally right before the phrase "blog posts" as an adjective.) IBM didn't lose out to an "operating system," if anything, it was Microsoft that made them capable of competing in the personal computer space. Google+ is not having trouble gaining traction because they don't have enough features. I get that you're trying to make a salient point about not underestimating new products, but it's not really cohesive. The fact that Microsoft and Google have succeeded with products in the past doesn't lead automatically to the conclusion that G+ is going to succeed. Google+ could be a success, or it could wither and die. For any positive example you cite, you could equally cite things like Microsoft BOB, the Zune, Apple Newton, OS/2, WebOS, Maemo, Sega Dreamcast, etc. There's far more to success than buckets of cash, innovation for the sake of innovation, or yard-long feature lists. I hope G+ continues to improve, but its success is not a foregone conclusion.
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- joelackner 14y agoanyone know when this launches?
- authorityaction 14y agoThey say at the bottom of the post that it will be rolling out to users over the next couple of days.
- Goronmon 14y agoWell, I was just browsing Google+ and all of a sudden on a random page click it switched to the new layout. So...now, apparently.
- kelsokennedy 14y agoI can confirm that it's live for me (in Canada).
- kelsokennedy 14y agoI can confirm that it's live for me (in Canada).
- cgarvey 14y agoI like this a lot, hopefully they'll overhaul their mobile app using this style. Seems like this design is really mobile friendly.
- denysonique 14y agoExcellent UI. To me it is very intuitive to use now. I am impressed
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ben0x539 14y agoSo is blogspot intentionally broken in the presence of NoScript in some vague attempt to protect javascript-based advertisements?
- icebraining 14y agoI had the same problem, so I looked into it a bit more. Apparently, NoScript disables local storage in such a way that even testing for it (using if(window.localStorage)) throws a NS_ERROR_DOM_SECURITY_ERR and terminates the script. This is obviously problematic, and seems a bug in NS instead of Blogspot, although it can be a deliberate decision by the NoScript devs, I don't know. Following the instructions in the NoScript forums[1] works by making it return "null" instead of an error, thus letting the script run. I'd still prefer if Blogspot didn't need Javascript to display a simple post, but alas, the trend seems to be unstoppable. [1]: http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5208 http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5208
- loceng 14y agoBeautiful.
- kyasui 14y agoIf Google+ gets a redesign, and no one is around to see it, does Google+ have a redesign?
- NickPollard 14y agoI've noticed that all the people joking about Google+ are the ones who don't use it, whilst the ones who do just happily get on using it.
- monochromatic 14y ago> the ones who do just happily get on using it and happily continue being google employees
- NickPollard 14y agoReally? You're going to go there? You're making just the exact same mistake my comment referred to. The 'joke' is that it's just Google employees, but guess what? Reality doesn't mirror that. My circles are full of people who aren't Google employees. If yours are, then either you work at Google or you have a weird selection of friends and associates. If you have proof that the 170million odd members are predominantly Google employees (which seems unlikely, unless they've spent their 20% time developing AI to be used as social networking bots), then I'll be pleased to see it.
- SandersAK 14y agoI'm just never sure which Google+ I'm supposed to use - my work email, my other work email, my personal email, the email associated with my social networks? The biggest barrier for me is the inability to login in with whatever I want and then hook in whatever networks I want.
- karora 14y agoIf only they could understand that UX is showing less, they would have won half the battle. Who needs all these buttons thrown at your face. If I need them Ill get them, please don't clutter and make user feel, "oh its so complicated". I had hopes on google plus, but this new UI, first thing that comes to my mind is Google Wave, less is more is the lesson for Google, the magic they have known for long(Google HomePage) but are discarding now.
- kingsidharth 14y agoI hope they fix their typography too. Arial is not the way to go, especially when you allow paragraphs as posts (or essays). Line-height makes it even worse. </designer's-rant>
- waqf 14y agoI just don't expect professional typography from the web yet. Can you give an example of a site that does it right?
- kingsidharth 14y agohttp://37signals.com http://37signals.com http://facebook.com http://facebook.com (Lucida Grande is a fab choice) http://readability.com http://readability.com - one of the key things this app changes is typography. Check out default typography on thesis theme - http://64notes.com/thesis http://64notes.com/thesis Examples of bad typography: google groups, Google Plus http://wierd.com http://wierd.com I've many more if you want.
- nzeribe 14y ago"I like our strategy. I like it a lot."
- Maratonda 14y agoThe redesign is already featured in their "Learn More" page. [1] http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/learnmore/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/learnmore/
- schpet 14y agoAfter clicking "Join Google+" on that page I am using the new redesign
- instakill 14y agoNice, but still too JS heavy for my liking.
- cryptoz 14y agoCould you expand on what you mean? Is there a particular aspect of Javascript you dislike?
- downx3 14y agoI was quite relieved to find that this iteration is actually semi-usable without JS. Still doesn't degrade as well as facebook mobile. Can't tell what the buttons are without the rollover, unless you have learnt them. Both Gmail and G+ rely on background images for buttons too, which leads to quite a bit of mystery meat navigation for me (I prefer to set my own background in my browser.)
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI thought the original G+ design was refreshing and original.... but this is... so much better! The main nav bar on the side reminds me of Unity. And yes I know that many people don't have wide screens and many also despise Unity (for that or other reasons) but this feller here sure likes it.
- peterwiese 14y agono one has no wide screen
- downx3 14y agoFalse assertion.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jaysonelliot 14y agoThe first thing I have to do when looking at a demo video like this is mute the music so I can actually look at the usability of the interface without the soundtrack trying to tug at my heartstrings. I find it hard to tell if this is going to be a step in the right direction or not. There are some red flags that go up for me, but it's obviously hard to judge based on descriptions and videos alone. One of the biggest UX problems with G+ today is the way it handles notifications and conversations. Every event gets a notification, to the point that I rarely see a Google page without some red number in the top right, usually indicating nothing more interesting than "{random user} has added you to their Circles." The signal-to-noise ratio for the notifications is so poor that I've developed notification blindness. I've subconsciously tuned it out, so if someone actually does have something to say to me, I miss it. Conversations on G+ are also poorly handled today. Because so many things are handled in the notification overlay, they all have to live in a narrow band on the right that is very hard to process visually. Whether in an overlay or on Plus itself, conversations are difficult to follow with their collapsed views and lack of adequate visual cues for the reader's attention. I'm intrigued by the "Conversation Cards" that are mentioned on the redesign announcement, but the fact that they don't warrant their own demo video leads me to suspect that Google hasn't considered the usability of their conversations to be a top priority. One last red flag for me is the customizable "navigation ribbon." It's an adage in UX that when you see an interface that asks the user to customize the layout, it means the designers gave up trying to find the right solution themselves. I'm not saying it can never work, but it is a red flag for me here. I hope the new G+ is a big step forward. I've been wanting to love Google Plus since it first arrived. At least they're devoted to G+, and they're staying hungry.
- freehunter 14y agoI agree that the conversations are difficult. When I click the notification window to see a reply, all I get is that one reply. I find it cumbersome to find the full conversation, to the point where I usually go to that person's page and find the original, eschewing the notifications altogether.
- jmillikin 14y ago
- Karunamon 14y agoLooks like it hasn't been rolled out to Apps users yet. I'm on the rapid release option too.
- RobAtticus 14y agoIt hasn't rolled out to my regular account. I wouldn't worry about it until a week or two has passed.
- rplnt 14y agoI see many people hoping for features/changes... I hope they will add anchor with target to images (and content posts in general, I guess). You can't middle click to open image in background and you can't do anything at all with javascript disabled. I really, really hate that (the former). Especially because they change the cursor on hover which makes you think it's an clickable anchor. Double middle-click used to work (seriously, what?) but it doesn't for some time now.
- ariful 14y agoIt looks great to me, no problem with navigation or loading time. But can't remove post description. http://www.sociableblog.com/2012/04/11/google-plus-gets-redesign/ http://www.sociableblog.com/2012/04/11/google-plus-gets-rede...
- senjutsuka 14y agoGive me google glass and I'll start using my google plus account. Until then, FB is too convenient and ubiquitous.
- joelmaat 14y agoI can't believe they just copied the header of Facebook's timeline approach. I wish they'd be more original and old-Apple-product-experience changing with this damn "project."
- JohnnyFlash 14y agoWhen is this being rolled out? Everything looks the same to me. A skim of the article doesn't appear to say.
- brohee 14y agoGot rolled out for me.
- canop_fr 14y agoI got it for one account, not for another one. Must be kind of progressive.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kelsokennedy 14y agoI can confirm that it's live for me (in Canada).
- b2hack 14y agoGoogle vs Facebook. Google+1
- unpsynd 14y agoA majority have tried google+ and moved away. Will this redesign make them come back?
- waqf 14y agoCitation?
- AznHisoka 14y agoI think Google+ can capture part of that anti-Facebook audience. Emphasize more meaningful conversations, and less trivial updates and lame drama. Sort of what those Mac commercials did by comparing themselves against boring old Windows.
- huhtenberg 14y agoI am a part of that audience and it's not anti-Facebook, but anti-(intrusively-social), which includes G+. Perhaps even at a higher spot than Facebook.
- hk_kh 14y agoMaybe they can capture part of the anti-Facebook audience. They would never get the anti-social-network audience, though. And this, which seems trivial, is important, because (for me) it's not that I am anti-Facebook, it's that I would never spend my time on a social network. Besides, the same arguments that goes in an anti-Facebook opinion, are relevant also for g+
- username3 14y agoPlease put comments in a div with a fixed height. http://tinypic.com/r/34r7rdx/5 http://tinypic.com/r/34r7rdx/5
- injekt 14y agoI think the new UI. One thing I have noticed, though, is that my 'stream' is displaying posts from all sorts of people I have no idea about, not just people in my circles. A little confused with that, the only option I have is to select individual circles.
- ramy_d 14y agoyou can decide how much a circle gets to go in your stream. look for a slider near the top.
- OoTheNigerian 14y agoThis is really weird. I just wrote a post this morning http://oonwoye.com/2012/04/11/dear-larry-before-you-buy-airtime-lets-talk-about-google/ http://oonwoye.com/2012/04/11/dear-larry-before-you-buy-airt... and this redesign reappears a few hours later. It is good hangouts is getting much more prominence.
- SkyMarshal 14y agoFor me, the problem with G+ is that you can't fine-tune the signal:noise ratio enough. In a nutshell, Facebook is a network of people I know first IRL, so getting pictures of their dinner last night or latest cat's antics and other useless stuff I can sort of live with, it goes with the territory. But G+ is more like Twitter with longer posts - I follow a a lot of people I don't know IRL, but only because of a shared interest, and I'm only interested in their posts on that interest, not the other noise. Whereas pointless posts on Twitter are only 140 characters, don't take up much screen real estate, and are easy to skim and/or skip, that's less the case with G+. I really want a way in G+ to filter out posts by those people that don't have anything to do with the shared interest. For example, if I create a "Functional Programming" circle and subscribe to a bunch of Haskell, Ocaml, ML, Lisp, and Scheme programmers that I don't know IRL, I'm really not interested in their vacation photos and whatnot. But currently there's no way to filter their vacation photo posts from their posts on functional programming. An effective 90% solution would be to simply add hash tag filtering to circles, so I can instruct my Functional Programming circle to only accept posts with #functional, #functionalprogramming, #haskell, #ocaml, #ml, #lisp, #scheme, and block anything else without at least one of those hash tags in it. Not quite perfect, and G+'ers would have to develop the habbit of using hashtags more than they currently do, but it's functional and flexible enough and provides the tools necessary for the community to solve this problem themselves. This is my biggest G+ pain point, and while I have nothing negative to say about the redesign (it's nice), as long as it doesn't solve this one problem, it will do nothing to get me using G+ more (I check in about 2 or 3 times a week currently).
- eblume 14y agoI agree, and a friend of mine actually had a working Chrome extension to support filtering by tags (implemented as hashtags, but transparently, so if you had the plugin it rendered the tags in a prettier way.) Unfortunately his only takeaway from the experience was that designing extensions for chrome was really hard, and stuff kept breaking. He eventually gave up, IIRC.
- eblume 14y agoWhoops, I got something important wrong there and the edit deadline has long passed: his takeaway was that writing extensions for Google+ was hard, not for chrome. His complaint was the lack of a G+-specific DOM API, and how (at the time at least) Google kept changing things that broke everything.
- foolinator 14y agoEven though one can't reliably predict how to take down facebook, it's great to see google keep trying to lash at it. Historically, no tech company stays in the #1 spot for more than a decade. That doesn't mean Facebook won't be around in 10 years, but it does show how volatile the tech market can be. XBox was viewed as a joke but they kept at it with their cash machine, and now they're successful. Dreamcast was awesome but they didn't have the cash to keep at it and had to throw in the towel. If google keeps at it, they'll sink or swim, but you have to be persistent to try to take that share. Personally, I think google hires at a far more talented tech pool. They're doing things like VR glasses and automatic parking cars while facebook makes a big deal about integrating with Skype. So the talent is there. The money is there. The marketing is there. We'll see how this plays out. I'm excited to see the outcome.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago> no tech company stays in the #1 spot for more than a decade If that were a fixed law, then Facebook could still wait for Windows, Photoshop, Skype and Google Search to disappear before they had to worry about themselves. I hope I will remember to revisit this comment in half a decade. :)
- foolinator 14y agoFacebook isn't even the #1 spot right now. Google, apple, and microsoft are still much bigger companies than they are. And oh yeah, they make PROFIT. IMHO, facebook is GREATLY overvalued, but only time will tell if it's true. Their investment in price assumes that they will continue to grow and will still have no competition in a 1/2 decade. $120 billion, or $80 billion - depending on who you talk to. Google is making cars that the blind can drive and glasses we saw in terminator. Facebook, they're giving us timeline. GE makes light bulbs, owns NBC, create military jets. Facebook gives us status updates. You think facebook can possibly be worth 1/3 of ALL of GE? Of course, I'm joking a lil about facebook's offerings. I know they offer far more. However, to think they're going to be the only dog in town doing what they do is just being ignorant. Tech is filled with creative people who fuck shit up all the time. Just as facebook made some people turn heads at MSFT and GOOG, so will someone else in the future.
- huoju 14y agoThis version's is a good improvement. But there is too many spaces on the screen, it's waste.
- newobj 14y agoDeck chairs get rearranged (titanic.blogspot.com)
- downx3 14y agoSurprised to see Google advertising on the TV in the UK for G+, a week later they change the navigation - that's pretty bad timing for any new adopters.
- mark_l_watson 14y agoI reading the comments here it seems like a lot of people don't use a basic G+ technique: don't view All Circles at once unless you really want to spend a while (like 5 or 10 minutes) browsing everyone you follow. For example, I have circles for Java, Clojure, AI, Ruby, Semantic Web, etc., etc., and near the top of the screen I'll switch from All Circles to just AI, for example. Also: the red notification number in the upper right corner: I usually ignore this and look at them all just once a day. I don't treat G+ as stuff that I have to read. If I read useful and/or fun information that is fine, but I don't get concerned about missing something.
- jamesbritt 14y agoThere's an excellent chrome extension that allowed one to check off specific circles to view as a group. Rather than have to view one circle, then the next circle, then the next, I could view multiple circles at the same time. What this really meant was that I could get an "All" view that excluded those circles holding people I'm only sporadically interested in, without having to play with the circle frequency slider thing. This new g+ design obliterates that plugin. The inability to view sets of circles is a major failing of the UI.
- tomkarlo 14y ago"What this really meant was that I could get an "All" view that excluded those circles holding people I'm only sporadically interested in, without having to play with the circle frequency slider thing." So you're complaining that you can't get a filtered stream of posts without having to use the feature for filtering your stream? It's not like you have to do it more than once per circle you want to exclude.
- jamesbritt 14y agoSo you're complaining that you can't get a filtered stream of posts without having to use the feature for filtering your stream? No, I'm not. It's not like you have to do it more than once per circle you want to exclude. I have, say, a dozen circles. Can you tell me how I can quickly choose to view a stream that consists of all of the content from only a subset of those circles? Then quickly choose a different subset of circles? Or view a stream of all content except those in the PostTooMnayPictures circle? I know of no way to do any kind of circle grouping/ungrouping, but if it's there I'd love to know about it. The plus/minus extension allowed this by turning the list of circles into a multi-select checklist. Two seconds to change to any subset of circles to view. Edit: It looks like the +/- developer is planning on updating his extension to work with the new layout https://plus.google.com/117134788479394921938/posts https://plus.google.com/117134788479394921938/posts I'm thinking the other layout issues (too much whitespace, useless menu-y cruft) can be fixed with greasemonkey.
- kposehn 14y agoTo me, G+ is a good effort from Google. They've made a concerted attempt to add a social layer on top of the core Google products that have a unique take on social functionality and some manner of utility for users. The problem comes down to engineering however - or more precisely, engineers. I have always gotten the sense that G+ is a social network for "nerds". In this context, "nerds" refers to people that (like me) are: 1. More technically inclined than the average person 2. Willing to invest more time and effort into their social circles 3. Capable of grasping more abstract social concepts 4. Have an attention span longer than a gnat While this is a very nice social network, G+ features are not designed for the instant grasp that Facebook has perfected. I think that FB's strategy of catering to the lowest common denominator - literally - in an elegant and usable way is what continues to cement their dominance over the space. This latest redesign seems to be still very technically oriented, despite the pretty icons. The entire concept of reordering things is quite literally bunk when you get down to the average joe. When are you going to reorder your icons on the left? What utility does it provide? As a regular user, you want something but the entire concept of moving stuff around on the screen isn't your priority. It is parsley on a dish, not the main course. Each G+ design feature I've seen so far continues to be just little bits of garnish, providing little in the way of truly useful functionality that makes the overall experience as a whole better in some way. Of course, nothing is guaranteed in business and most certainly no one will be king of the hill forever. The world changes after all, and the generation that is being born now will utilize social media in a way we can barely imagine. However, that still doesn't change the fact that G+ as a whole seems to be an effort to make a social network for Googlers, not the world. We as HN readers should not gauge G+ by what we see through our own experience - we should gauge it by what our non-technical friends, family and random-acquaintances do, and that is how I'm gauging this design change right now (go FaceTime!).
- stan_rogers 14y agoThey've made a concerted attempt to add a social layer on top of the core Google products... That is the problem with G+ for me in a nutshell, and the reason why I killed that part of my Google account. I rather liked Google+ as an environment; it was the spillover into the other Google properties that I found irksome. Frankly, I don't mind so much that Google learns a little bit about my habits and develops recommendations that are in accordance with them. But when I visit, say, YouTube, I would like the recommendations driven by my tastes (driven by my history) and subscriptions/follows -- I don't want political or religious/anti-religious rantings driven by my professional colleagues, pseudo-scientific claptrap shared by my (otherwise interesting) meatspace friends, and so on. They've already shared that stuff on G+; I don't need it pushing down stuff that is likely more relevant to my interests (or needs) on other Google properties.
- pauljonas 14y agoStill, way too much screen real estate reserved for the "static" fixed header bar. And now G+ has added a "static" fixed vertical frame too. I thought the web reading public already expressed their disfavor of frames.
- Aissen 14y agoChat now takes screen real estate even when not in use. A shame :-(
- gms 14y agoGoogle using the word 'beautiful'. That's a new one.
- martian 14y agoInteresting: Google+ borrows Twitter's awful grammar: "Who to follow."
- nextparadigms 14y agoJust got to try it out now. I see that you can scroll inside the chat list, but as soon as the scrollbar gets to the end, it automatically starts scrolling the main page. Why? It seems annoying to me, because I expect it to do one action (scroll inside the chat) and it ends up doing another (scrolling the main page).
- RuggeroAltair 14y agoAm I the only one who thinks that the new UI is not very pretty? It's all (un)balanced to the left (for big enough screens) and the gray frame feels like a cage. Maybe some things work better, but I didn't have a good gut reaction at all seeing the new thing. P.S. I didn't watch the explanatory video, they are good at those but I wanted to see what it was without guidance.
- fufulabs 14y agoI also think this is a step backwards. I was excited by the looks of it but the feel is very inferior. The feel reminded me of Microsoft Word somehow and thats not a good thing.
- zem 14y agoyeah, the whole unbalanced-to-the-left thing is really offputting, to the point that i'm avoiding reading my stream. i planning to play around with css userstyles and see if i can centre the stream properly.
- duaneb 14y agoI just wish I had friends on google+. :(
- pavanky 14y agoIs it just me or does anyone with large screen resolutions see this abomination?! https://twitter.com/#!/pavan_ky/status/190128945918783489/photo/1 https://twitter.com/#!/pavan_ky/status/190128945918783489/ph...
- cmelbye 14y agoHave you never seen a web site that uses a fixed width layout before?
- spwmoni 14y agoIt's not entirely fixed-width, though. One nested column (the one containing the actual content) is fixed-width and left-justified within another column that expands to fill the window with whitespace. It's hideous.
- pavanky 14y agoI have seen fixed width websites before. But there was some design element (and good reasoning behind it) to justify it. For the most part these kind of websites make sure you can just ignore the white space. But on google+, when they have a column on the extreme right (for chat), you can not ignore the damn white space. It is always there. It just looks a design push that had not been taught out completely.
- ticks 14y agoIt's a bit too chunky for me, i.e. requires a high screen resolution to view content properly - similar to what they did with their webmail service, but at least with that you can switch it to a compact mode. I think Google's employees may have a skewed view of the web due their high end computers.
- zerop 14y agoOn facebook page I can hardly find an empty space, but redesigned google+ has so much white space on each page...white space can be used for postit notes
- jongraehl 14y agoAnyone know how to get the humungous right gutter to shrink without hiding the chat element?
- donniezazen 14y agoToo many panels and everything in boxes took away the elegance.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- thesash 14y agoI think this is a positive direction for G+, with some nice, friendly, emotionally engaging UI touches that will help differentiate it from Facebook. However, I think there is one serious usability issue here, and that is the left alignment. On my 1920 x 1080 screen there is a massive gap between content and chat bar on the right. the content area feels uncomfortably crowded on the left, and it's just plain awkward to scan all the way to the right. http://cl.ly/060H0B3o1q0l1O3g0X03 http://cl.ly/060H0B3o1q0l1O3g0X03
- curiousfiddler 14y agoThe new design looks beautiful. But google+, while you have most of the features that are needed for a good all round social experience, please make it easy for non-techie people to understand.
- acqq 14y agoThey still want to enforce users to use "real" (for their definition of "real") names. As I write this, my profile is "suspended" because I didn't type my real name: "Your profile is currently under review to make sure it is in compliance with the Google+ Names Policy and User Content and Conduct Policy. Reviews are typically completed within a few days." I also had to select "other" for gender, there's no option named "I just don't want to write it." Yeah, sure: "By focusing on you, the people you care about, and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know" Context: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/google-nymwars-redux/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/google-nymwars-redux/ https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Zoiu https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Z...
- iloveponies 14y agoI decided to use a name that looked real, but isn't, and isn't mine. So far, I've yet to be caught by Google. The cost of this? Explaining to friends who don't know my opinion on anonymity on the internet.
- hub_ 14y agoThey also have numerous number of people doing so. And people kicked for using their real name. Etc. In short it just prove the unenforceability of the policy. I heckled them about that in a conference and when offered to get help to have my account fixed, I declined saying that the only thing they need to fix is the policy itself by retracting it and apologizing.
- zedadex 14y ago> I heckled them about that in a conference and when offered to get help to have my account fixed, I declined saying that the only thing they need to fix is the policy itself by retracting it and apologizing. Brilliant.
- bo1024 14y agoYeah, no matter what they say about redesigns, I have trouble picturing G+ as a service designed to help make my life better. I just see it as a ploy by Google to get my personal data. It will take a lot for them to change that opinion now.
- paul9290 14y agoOne thing of value I have noticed with Google Plus is when you receive a gmail within gmail, Google now includes senders Google Plus photo & link to their public plus account. This has saved me some time as I didn't have to go hunt and peck for information about who the sender is. So plus 1 Google ... that alone has proved valuable and falls more align with being a search/identity company rather then a social network.
- kill_all_humans 14y agoI deleted my Google+ account because: 1. I couldn't post the hyperlinks of my choice. 2. Google was inserting content at the top of my stream that didn't come from any of my circles, and I couldn't turn that off.
- vibrunazo 14y ago#WhiteSpace is trending: https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23whitespace/posts https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23whitespace/posts Also funny: https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23usesforwhitespace https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23usesforwhitespace
- Steko 14y ago"More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+" Seems to me that continuing to count everyone who gets an Android phone or signs up for Gmail as a G+ user just invites people to pile on and point out how underwhelming G+'s userbase has been to date. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CPinterest%2CInstagram%2CPath&date=10%2F2011%207m&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CPin...
- qseep 14y agoWhat they need is are "show more like this"/"show fewer like this" buttons. Then they can use a Bayes filter (like the Spam flag in Gmail) to hide posts. So if you don't want to see that programming-language researcher's vacation photos, click "show fewer like this".
- hub_ 14y agoDid they redesign their name policy or do they still have this very exclusionary policy that make G+ unfit?
- tissarah 14y agoDoes anyone else notice themselves leaning to the left? I feel uncomfortable.
- snotrockets 14y agoI must say this design looks oddly familiar. Can't they just paint it blue and call it GoogBook?
- schukin 14y agoI chuckled when I scrolled up and down this blog post, and paired it with the headline indicating a "simpler" Google.
- obtino 14y agoIs it me, or is the large amount of white-space in the new design on wide-screen monitors unnerving?
- bookwormAT 14y agoI very much like the space. It makes the ui feel more calm and less noisy. But even more I like this #usesforwhitespace meme that is going on right now: https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23usesforwhitespace/posts https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23usesforwhitespace/posts Some fun ideas in there.