
Google Makes Its New Flat Logo And "App Launcher" Style Nav Menu Official - NewsFlash
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/19/google-makes-its-new-flat-logo-and-app-launcher-style-nav-menu-official-will-roll-out-over-the-next-few-weeks/
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jotux
I like parts of this but don't understand the addition of the google search
box in the new tab page. Isn't one of the big "innovations" of the chrome UI
the unified address bar you can search from? I use chrome as my primary
browser and every time I use firefox or IE the first thought that comes to
mind when I open them is, "What's the point of the separate search box, why
not search in the address bar like chrome?" Now every time I open a new tab in
chrome I think, "What's the point of this search box right below the giant
address bar I'm supposed to be using to search from?" And to top it off, as
soon as you start typing in the search box on the new tab it moves your cursor
to the address bar and the logo/search box disappears from the page which is a
truly WTF-worthy UI decision.

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unknownian
>why not search in the address bar like chrome

In Firefox at least, I've learned that the regexp isn't as fast if you type a
search query in the URL bar. It takes slightly longer for the browser to
decide if the text is a URL or not. That's why I reenabled the search bar in
Firefox (it's not required).

~~~
gman99
>It takes slightly longer for the browser to decide if the text is a URL or
not

I had the same problem which forced me to enable the search bar. But I've
since discovered that if the text you entered into the search bar starts with
a "?" character, Firefox immediately assumes it is a search query.

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ihsw
For those checking google.com to _see_ update, you might have to wait. It'll
be rolled out gradually over the next couple of weeks.

[http://insidesearch.blogspot.ca/2013/09/updating-google-
bar-...](http://insidesearch.blogspot.ca/2013/09/updating-google-bar-many-
products.html)

It would be nice to see that mentioned in the TechCrunch article, though.

~~~
Andrex
You don't have to wait if you go to google.com, paste this into your dev
console (Ctrl+Shift+J in Chrome) and hit enter:

    
    
        document.cookie="PREF=ID=e66a207a51ceefd8:U=936bafc98b2a9121:FF=0:LD=en:NR=10:CR=2:TM=1378808351:LM=1379592992:SG=1:S=OXyq0fqClYB66VuV ; path=/; domain=google.com";window.location.reload();

~~~
cocoflunchy
Awesome thanks!

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CWIZO
This is also in my start page of chrome. Google's search bar is now also the
main thing on my start page. And the thumbnails for my favourite pages are
smaller and under it. I hate it. Does anyone know how to get rid of this?

The thing is that this was already there a couple of months ago but it went
away only to reappear two days ago.

edit: image of what I'm talking about:
[http://i.minus.com/ibepLSMwuCsHra.png](http://i.minus.com/ibepLSMwuCsHra.png)

edit2: they also somehow managed to use the omni bar for search on google.com,
there isn't any search box on the page itself. Which is also highly annoying.
What's up with that?
[http://i.minus.com/iskQdZsxapVei.png](http://i.minus.com/iskQdZsxapVei.png)

~~~
maggit
Are you on an experimental version of Chrome? I mean, are you using Chrome,
but a variant other than the stable one?

I've sometimes found that they roll out crazy experiments in the non-stable
Chrome builds that integrate with crazy features on Google's web sites, such
as the "remove the search box from the web page"-feature. I've since come to
prefer the stable variant of Chrome :)

~~~
jibberia
Same here. I got off the dev release channel at home after that, and switched
to stable at work after they made the new tab page look like the Google
homepage. It makes my browser less useful, and I couldn't find a way to
disable it!

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mmuro
I really don't understand why in the world they would consolidate their menu
into an "app launcher" for every single view. This is the opposite of
responsive design.

Here's some free web design advice, Google: I'm not on my iPhone or iPad all
the time. Show me some links if I have the room - it doesn't have to even be
all of them.

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donniezazen
Anyone knows what's the story behind YouTube using its own bar and not the
uniform Google bar.

~~~
Andrex
It's going to be using a version of this bar:

[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/09/google-rolls-out-
ne...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2013/09/google-rolls-out-new-
navigation.html)

I imagine that was a major consideration when designing this new bar, "How
could it fit in on YouTube?"

