 Website review:
Google's new layout
Tallulah Habib
You're not in Kansas anymore
You may have noticed some time this week when you ran a search on Google that things didn't look quite the same. Perhaps your text looked bolder, the logo looked more colourful, or perhaps it was the left side bar filled with all kinds of strange dingbats you'd never seen before that made you quickly double-check the url.
Humans don't often like change, especially when it comes out of the blue and happens to something we rely on every day. But this newfangled Google is not really that different from the one you know and love.
Google released a new layout for its results page last week. Aside from aiming to remain “light and whimsical”, the overhaul gives users easy access to additional functionality. Some of this functionality has always been there, but hiding behind plus signs and advanced options. Some has been lurking in the GoogleLabs, being tweaked and poked ‘till perfect.
Design
The first major change is to the layout – a side bar has been added on the left. In order to balance out this extra bulkiness, Google's design team has lightened the logo and the page numbers.
Old functionality, new place
The side bar includes options that used to be across the top of the Google page, allowing you to filter your results by medium (e.g. images), or to see “everything” (what used to be known as “web results”). Here you can also select whether to search internationally or in your country, as before.
 But there's more
There are a couple of new tools available if you click on the extender arrow. You can also filter results by time – functionality that used to only be available for news results. You can choose to see only pages you've never visited before, or only pages you have. More exciting, you can filter results based on the kind of pages you want – whether you wish to see images or not, shopping sites or not and even if you want to see a little thumbnail of the site
For the more daring, there are two new views: one as a timeline, and the more interesting one, a “wonder wheel”, which is a spider diagram of results, allowing you to visually narrow down what you are searching for by category.
Happy?
Feedback so far has been good, according to Google. However, if you're unhappy, unfortunately Google will not release a Classic view version, taking the stance that if they do, you won't get used to the new. If you're feeling sentimental, however, The Next Web has found an archaic url that is as of yet unchanged.
|
