

Google+ gets a redesign - izuzak
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/toward-simpler-more-beautiful-google.html

======
jaysonelliot
The 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.

~~~
haberman
Can't you configure what gets delivered as a notification? If you're so
popular that people are adding you to circles all the time, can't you just
turn those notifications off?

~~~
mbrubeck
As far as I can tell, you can customize email and phone notifications, but you
can't customize the notifications that appear under the red alert number on
Google web pages. (I might be missing something.)

~~~
caffleine
There's a "Who can send you notifications?" section on the settings page which
allows you to configure who can send you notifications that trigger the red
alert.

~~~
acdha
This does not actually work for being added to circles.

~~~
nailer
Try this instead: <https://github.com/mikemaccana/japanese_mayonnaise>

~~~
acdha
I'm becoming increasingly strict avoiding things like that: if Google doesn't
care about wasting my attention, why help them by using their service?

------
SkyMarshal
For 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).

~~~
unreal37
I think G+ needs to clarify whether it's aimed at "only real friends" as
Facebook is, or aimed at "mainly people you don't know" a la Twitter. Once
they clarify that, people will stop posting vacation photos for strangers to
see, or stop posting Lisp programming tips to their personal friends.

~~~
vito
Isn't it the whole point of Circles that they _don't_ have to clarify that?
You're in complete control of who you send things to from the very beginning,
and the only way you can add people is by putting them in the appropriate
circle(s).

~~~
kin
Yeah, people are sharing wrong. If one person posts Vacation photos, they
should post it to their Friends circle, while their Tech posts can be public
posts. But, to be honest it's one more thing for people to do and is the
reason why there's no fine-tuning of noise.

~~~
btilly
No they are not sharing wrong, the system is broken.

Google+ offers many ways for me to target content to a group of people that I
personally know, and only one, "Public", to distribute content to anyone who
might be interested.

Unfortunately there are at least 3 common use cases that need to be
considered:

1\. I target a message to people I think are interested. (Google+ does this
well.)

2\. I broadcast a message to people who may be interested. (Google+ sucks at
this.)

3\. A group of people forms for some purpose (work, game, whatever), and needs
to be able to communicate within that group. (Google+ has no support at all
for this, and the result is that I was forced to go to Facebook to communicate
with people I was playing a Google+ game with.)

There is a real need for all three modes, and I don't know of anyone who does
all three well.

~~~
toyg
I agree that point 3 is still a very big omission. They must be trying hard to
merge this "Group" feature into their Circles metaphor, and failing for some
reason or other. I personally can't see how hard it could be to add special
Circles which are shared by multiple people but managed by only a specific
few, but I don't know anyone at Google working on G+.

------
jenius
Yeah 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.

~~~
ed209
One of the most hotly discussed API feature requests [1] but I'm nervous about
it. I don't want my stream filled with junk the way my Facebook stream is.

[1] [http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-
platform/issues/detail?...](http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-
platform/issues/detail?id=41&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Component%20Owner%20Summary)

~~~
cshenoy
> _I don't want my stream filled with junk the way my Facebook stream is._

I always wondered why the Google+ team didn't implement that from the get go
but after reading that, that's probably the biggest reason as to why they
haven't.

~~~
Lewisham
This is the reason:

[https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/FXaGHpa1...](https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/FXaGHpa1kWK)

It's a not very thinly-veiled shot at frictionless sharing and the like.

Having seen the hellhole my Facebook stream has become (while I've tried hard,
it's almost impossible not to end up with unintended consequences for Apps and
such), I'm on Vic's side.

------
kposehn
To 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
_They'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.

------
acqq
They 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/>

[https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Z...](https://plus.google.com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Zoiu)

~~~
iloveponies
I 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_
They 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
> 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.

------
krmmalik
I 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
People. It's missing people.

~~~
krmmalik
I'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
For 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.

------
rplnt
I 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.

------
mladenkovacevic
I 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
no one has no wide screen

~~~
downx3
False assertion.

------
kingsidharth
I 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
I just don't expect professional typography from the web yet. Can you give an
example of a site that does it right?

~~~
kingsidharth
<http://37signals.com>

<http://facebook.com> (Lucida Grande is a fab choice)

<http://readability.com> \- one of the key things this app changes is
typography.

Check out default typography on thesis theme - <http://64notes.com/thesis>

Examples of bad typography:

google groups, Google Plus

<http://wierd.com>

I've many more if you want.

------
Steko
"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%2CPin...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=Google%20Plus%2CPinterest%2CInstagram%2CPath&date=10%2F2011%207m&cmpt=q)

------
karora
If 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.

------
RuggeroAltair
Am 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
I 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.

------
ed209
Glad to see Hangouts promoted in this design. Think that's probably the G+
trump card.

~~~
bonyt
I 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
It's going to change the face of podcasting, that's for sure. Case in point
<https://plus.google.com/110701307803962595019/posts> \- and maybe that will
drag in more users (by interest graph rather than friend/family graph).

------
kirinan
This 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.

------
foolinator
Even 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
> 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
Facebook 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.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> Facebook isn't even the #1 spot right now

FWIW, I interpreted this as the #1 spot for any given category of software.
Facebook are clearly the #1 for social and have been so for a while. That's
good enough in the context of this discussion.

It surprises me too, actually, given their absolutely terrible mobile apps. :(

------
hub_
Did they redesign their name policy or do they still have this very
exclusionary policy that make G+ unfit?

------
mark_l_watson
I 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
There'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
"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
_So 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>

I'm thinking the other layout issues (too much whitespace, useless menu-y
cruft) can be fixed with greasemonkey.

~~~
tomkarlo
Sorry - thought you wanted to produce set subsets of your stream rather than
an arbitrary selection at any time. I agree that would be better served by
checkboxes, but I'd argue it's not a common case and probably got sacrificed
in the name of simplicity. Most users probably use the "All Circles" stream
all the time.

------
newobj
Deck chairs get rearranged (titanic.blogspot.com)

------
dutchbrit
Wow, 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
As far as I know, Path had done the cover photo thing before Facebook.

~~~
raldi
What's the "cover photo thing"?

~~~
dhawalhs
The 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.

------
pauljonas
Still, 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.

------
thesash
I 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>

------
denysonique
Excellent UI. To me it is very intuitive to use now. I am impressed

------
joelmaat
I 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."

------
paul9290
One 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.

------
nextparadigms
Just 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).

------
ticks
It'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.

------
vibrunazo
#WhiteSpace is trending: <https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23whitespace/posts>

Also funny: <https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23usesforwhitespace>

------
qseep
What 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".

------
injekt
I 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
you can decide how much a circle gets to go in your stream. look for a slider
near the top.

------
pavanky
Is it just me or does anyone with large screen resolutions see this
abomination?!
[https://twitter.com/#!/pavan_ky/status/190128945918783489/ph...](https://twitter.com/#!/pavan_ky/status/190128945918783489/photo/1)

~~~
cmelbye
Have you never seen a web site that uses a fixed width layout before?

~~~
pavanky
I 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.

------
curiousfiddler
The 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.

------
Maratonda
The redesign is already featured in their "Learn More" page.

[1] <http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/learnmore/>

~~~
schpet
After clicking "Join Google+" on that page I am using the new redesign

------
zerop
On 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

------
downx3
Surprised 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.

------
username3
Please put comments in a div with a fixed height.
<http://tinypic.com/r/34r7rdx/5>

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cgarvey
I like this a lot, hopefully they'll overhaul their mobile app using this
style. Seems like this design is really mobile friendly.

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ben0x539
So is blogspot intentionally broken in the presence of NoScript in some vague
attempt to protect javascript-based advertisements?

~~~
icebraining
I 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)

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schukin
I chuckled when I scrolled up and down this blog post, and paired it with the
headline indicating a "simpler" Google.

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instakill
Nice, but still too JS heavy for my liking.

~~~
downx3
I 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.)

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senjutsuka
Give me google glass and I'll start using my google plus account. Until then,
FB is too convenient and ubiquitous.

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JohnnyFlash
When is this being rolled out? Everything looks the same to me. A skim of the
article doesn't appear to say.

~~~
canop_fr
I got it for one account, not for another one. Must be kind of progressive.

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duaneb
I just wish I had friends on google+. :(

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obtino
Is it me, or is the large amount of white-space in the new design on wide-
screen monitors unnerving?

~~~
bookwormAT
I 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>

Some fun ideas in there.

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snotrockets
I must say this design looks oddly familiar. Can't they just paint it blue and
call it GoogBook?

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jongraehl
Anyone know how to get the humungous right gutter to shrink without hiding the
chat element?

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tissarah
Does anyone else notice themselves leaning to the left? I feel uncomfortable.

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martian
Interesting: Google+ borrows Twitter's awful grammar: "Who to follow."

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Aissen
Chat now takes screen real estate even when not in use. A shame :-(

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humanfromearth
I asked for <pre> support and look what they did instead.

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donniezazen
Too many panels and everything in boxes took away the elegance.

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gms
Google using the word 'beautiful'. That's a new one.

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nzeribe
"I like our strategy. I like it a lot."

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joelackner
anyone know when this launches?

~~~
authorityaction
They say at the bottom of the post that it will be rolling out to users over
the next couple of days.

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Karunamon
Looks like it hasn't been rolled out to Apps users yet. I'm on the rapid
release option too.

~~~
RobAtticus
It hasn't rolled out to my regular account. I wouldn't worry about it until a
week or two has passed.

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kyasui
If Google+ gets a redesign, and no one is around to see it, does Google+ have
a redesign?

~~~
NickPollard
I'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
> the ones who do just happily get on using it _and happily continue being
> google employees_

~~~
NickPollard
Really? 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.

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unpsynd
A majority have tried google+ and moved away. Will this redesign make them
come back?

~~~
waqf
Citation?

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OoTheNigerian
This is really weird. I just wrote a post this morning
[http://oonwoye.com/2012/04/11/dear-larry-before-you-buy-
airt...](http://oonwoye.com/2012/04/11/dear-larry-before-you-buy-airtime-lets-
talk-about-google/) and this redesign reappears a few hours later.

It is good hangouts is getting much more prominence.

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loceng
Beautiful.

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huoju
This version's is a good improvement. But there is too many spaces on the
screen, it's waste.

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b2hack
Google vs Facebook. Google+1

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AznHisoka
I 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
I 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.

