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I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but... Whatever blogspot theme Google uses for this blog is
by jsdalton 14y ago
I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but...
Whatever blogspot theme Google uses for this blog is just god awful (oh, I see, this is it: http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gmail-blog-has.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/as-you-may-have-noticed-gm...), and I swear it gets worse every time I view a post there.
To wit:
When I load the page I see the orange "loading" gears. Then that sliiiiides up to reveal the content. Really? Can they really not innovate here? This is a company that spends massive amounts of resources to get their homepage to load as quickly as possible. Heck, they even penalize companies in their index with slow loading times. And yet they purposefully add loading animations and transitions which add at least a second to page load, and probably more as far as time it takes me to engage in the content.
Also, every time I reload the page I see something different. Sometimes there is text in the black menu bar. Sometimes there is not. Sometimes there is an "extra" screen that slides up after the orange loading gears, sometimes not. Sometimes the sidebar navigation is there, sometimes not. Try refresh a few times yourself and you'll see.
Also, I love the five-second delay for the document URL update when you navigate via the sidebar.
All of these fancy, look-we're-using-ajax, gee-whiz-its-a-single-page-app features -- just for a simple blog post. Talk about complicating a simple problem!
Again, apologies for the rant but I couldn't even concentrate on what the blog post was saying because I was so distracted by this garbage.
- iamrohitbanga 14y agoThey have a sort of theme roller implemented. Watch the dropdown on top left.
- jrockway 14y agoApparently Blogger customers want this sort of design, so Google tests the themes on their own blogs before giving them to normal users. More feedback, etc.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 14y agoWorse yet, they've somehow broken the ability to hit space to scroll by a page.
- zaidf 14y agoThat is keeping with google's newly found traditions. For example, the ajax-ing of search has mostly broken the back key among others. Shit Case 1: sometimes you do a search, find a new phrase and begin typing it only to see the phrase disappear from the original search results and replaced with updated results for an incomplete and often incoherent query. Shit Case 2: often I begin typing a new search query and realize mid "sentence" that the current query was fine. Well, too late. Because the results have already refreshed. Hitting the back key does little good. In best case, it doesn't work. In worst case, it will take you to the previous physical page that you were on before you came to google. I find some of these changes mind boggling and can only convince myself to accept them by tell myself "hey google looks at the numbers, may be most folks just like it". Particularly the ajax search...annoys the crap out of me and finds way to enable itself even when I disable it.
- majorlazer 14y agoI am one of those people that loves the AJAX search. I know it's generally hated around here but I think getting the suggested results as you type in your search is one of the best search features Google has implemented. For example, let's say I found some new framework for a new language I haven't worked with. I can easily find competing frameworks by typing in something like '[framework name] vs' and Google will will suggest the most commonly compared frameworks. I think it's very useful when you don't know exactly what you are searching for. Yes, I know it has some usability issues but in my opinion the pros outweigh the cons.
- zaidf 14y agoYou are talking about Suggestions which is an entirely different feature than auto-refreshing of search(though both use ajax so I could have used a better description in my OP). I personally love Suggests as much as you. What I hate is when I type, say a few letters of my query, and begin seeing frivolous search results begin to appear. I hate when I hit the back key, often it takes me to the previous page or simply removes the last letter from my query and updates the results. I hate when I begin typing an obscure name I just found from another query and see it disappear after I have typed a couple of letters. I was just fine hitting the "return" key to pull up search results.
- masklinn 14y agoI find this theme great actually: it plain and simply doesn't work in Camino, which is my browser of choice, so I just blacklist any site which shows "the gear"
- devbryce 14y agoYou blacklist a site based on that it doesn't work on a web browser that isn't even on the list of the 10 most used browsers? (src - http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php)
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoDisplaying text articles in a cross-browser way has been a solved problem for more than a decade, the parent's browser of choice isn't to blame here.
- shinratdr 14y agoWhy not? The web browser in question is basically just FF10 with a more OS X friendly UI stapled onto it. The site owner shouldn't have to do anything special to get it working in Camino, just don't make it the most over-the-top and animation-heavy blog you can. Google chose to ignore that, and they're rightfully catching flak for it. This isn't some fancy homepage, it's an informational blog. Text on a white background is the reason 100% of visitors visit. Hamming it up at the expense of non-mainstream browser users is pointless.
- hnriot 14y agoSeriously? Chrome, Firefox, Safari... etc... Time to upgrade and stop blaming the web for advancing.
- 001sky 14y agoAdvancing? Most 'scripting is taking a pound of flesh from the user experience, in return for little to no actual gain.
- dredmorbius 14y agoFails to work w/o javascript enabled as well. Fail Google.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- acqq 14y agoAbsolute fail. This is really one of only a few sites that I know which don't present the content as HTML. Unbelievable.
- dredmorbius 14y agoMost of Gawker Media performs (or fails) similarly. There are others. I typically just reject them.
- EdiX 14y agoDisable cookies, watch the gears spin forever. They made a web page that requires javascript and cookies to view a piece of static content.
- jmsduran 14y agoI must admit, I am not a fan of the default blogspot theme. I miss their old blog theme that worked fast and well with or without JavaScript enabled.
- iigs 14y agoLaughably bogus (almost entirely unreadable) on a former flagship Android phone that is just barely out of contract, too.
- rbanffy 14y ago> I hate being the guy who sidetracks a thread off the bat by complaining about something unrelated, but... Then don't do it.
- andrewljohnson 14y agoUgh, why would anyone up-vote this comment? Some how this is the top comment, even though it doesn't address the content of the article. This happens all the time on HN and I find it very annoying. It's not just that I don't want to scroll past this comment. These meta-comments may seem harmless, but when this is the top comment, it stifles the entire discussion about the article. Instead of people discussing the merits of the new GMail UI, there is an endless chain of replies burying all the topical comments. I've said it before - I'd like to see a community guideline advising people not to make comments like this. These comments end up being easy ways to score points, entertaining for the people involved in the criticism, but harmful for the topical discussion. If it's a "Show HN" post about a hacker's new project, it seems topical to criticize the technology, but when it's a blog post, it seems so lame to criticize the blog software. This kind of complaint belongs in its own thread - it should be a blogpost or something. The comment doesn't even apply to me - the page works perfectly and crisply for me.
- bitwiseXOR 14y agosome perspective: it's an article about a new way to compose email... not a big woop, and all the points in is irrele-rant were spot on; the blog's design antics are distracting. stop being so jerky.
- jaydz 14y agoAgreed, these ux complaints are getting annoying.
- MaysonL 14y agoSo, of course, are these horrible ux's.
- te_chris 14y agoI'm finding HN harder and harder to deal with without comment upvote counts to provide perspective as a filtering mechanism. I find that regulars and comments like this always tend to get upvoted, even when they're normally far from the most insightful comments posted.
- 14y ago
- tharris0101 14y agoI was about to come on here and post this same thing. The worst part is the font. Almost unreadable using Chrome/Win7 (Their own browser!).
- acqq 14y agoAnybody who tries to defend them should just imagine how the web would look like when every page on the web would present you a more seconds of gears before the content, or absolutely nothing without the JavaScript.
- uladzislau 14y agoIf somebody's from Google is reading it, please fix your blog theme! It's the most unusable theme, period.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Nux 14y ago+1000! I've been more and more bothered by that shit "gears" theme, too. High CPU usage, cannot be viewed without javascript capable/enabled etc. Sometimes I get the feeling the google devs are being replaced by retarded monkeys.