Dumbest UI decision ever.
For those who haven’t noticed, the Google homepage (not iGoogle and not the Firefox start page, etc. but the real actual homepage at google.com) does a fade-in effect, showing only the logo, search bar and search buttons until the user moves the mouse, revealing everything else that used to always be visible upon page load.
Before Fade
After Fade
Supposedly they did this to create less clutter and be more minimalistic, since most people visiting the page are just going to type in their search and hit enter. Supposedly they also did tons of internal testing and randomized public testing. Well, I think it’s retarded and annoying and a user experience failure.
- The page was already more than acceptably minimalistic and uncluttered. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
- If users are just going to type and hit enter, they presumably are already pretty familiar with Google’s homepage and aren’t going to get confused by what else is on the screen. Targeting the wrong audience.
- If users are looking for something else on that page (I click the top-left links all the time), they first have to jiggle the mouse around and wait for the dumb fade-in to complete. Degradation of user experience.
- If I click “Home” in Firefox (which takes me to the Google homepage) and quickly move my mouse into the page area, the fade-in won’t even happen unless I keep moving my mouse for about a second. Poor implementation.
- I can’t scan the page to see what is available to me until I move the mouse. A new user might not even see what else is on the page. I should be able to look for what I want and then move the mouse to it. Hidden content, degradation of user experience.
- It can’t be disabled without using third-party browser extensions. If it could I probably wouldn’t even be writing this.
- It looks like Google is trying to make the page look stylish or something. No one cares, we just want our primary navigation links to be available immediately.
The bottom line is that this change adds no benefit and is more likely to degrade the user experience.
Reminds me of this Onion video, except this time it’s Google and not Apple:
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
See also:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont.html
I think this is a subliminal message from Google.
Enable Javascript if you haven’t!
Soo….. When can we expect this feature to come to michaelfogleman.com fogleblog?
This new feature will triple Google’s profitability over the next decade.
You can just click on the page and the stuff you want comes in immediately, at least on my system.