

Google Calendar has a new look - kenny_r
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=1351806&hl=en

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pedrokost
I am glad they decided to clean up the interface, but I think they made it too
bright. Just looking at it my eyes hurt, and the black navigation bar adds
even more contrast.

My favorite view is the WEEK view, but I've found it annoying that it doesn't
provide a full day review without scrolling (I only see 13:30 - midnight
without scrolling).

Furthermore the actual calendar covers only about 2/3 of the window's height,
the rest are double navigation and search bar. Isn't that a waste of space?

Otherwise I love Google Calendar and use it every day. I just want it even
better

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jeffchuber
Definitely agree with the day & space points. Need to show more of the day,
and more calendar. that search bar is fracking huge

~~~
Lazlo_Nibble
The search bar is ridiculously large, especially given how rarely I suspect
most folks actually run searches against their calendar. I'm sure some people
are doing it constantly but if I've even done it once I'd be surprised.

There's an awful lot of unused horizontal space in that black bar. Seems like
a good location for a search box.

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hswolff
I'm never one to shy away from change but all of Google's recent changes are
causing me to become quite flummoxed. Not because they're bad changes but
because Google has in the past been so change-adverse and to now be met with
multiple design refreshes within 72 hours is just causing my head to spin.

I know I'll get used to all the changes sooner rather than later but right now
I can't help but sit on some nostalgia for the old and plain Google of just
>72 hours ago.

Kudos Google, but please, be kind to my slowing brain. =)

~~~
pedrokost
It seems to me that they are trying to update the interfaces to look more
similar with Google+ and make them pixel perfect across all their
applications.

That's why I think it is good to see all the apps change in a short time span,
which makes it easier to get over the changes.

There seems to be some change regarding how they push updates and new
features/designs to the world. I remember it took months of testing before
they decided that the current search bar at google.com (wider and larger) was
good enough. Now they really are pushing total UI revamps in 2 days.

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thomaslangston
It is bad. The main problem (besides the black toolbar which blights every new
design) is that full day events are black text on the calendar's color (e.g.
green). This would be fine if I could select a light color, but the timed
events are on a white background. So I can read one, or the other, but not
both. Why get rid of the white text for full day events?

The create button looks gimmicky and cartoonish as well. I feel like this is
the result of UX testing gone terribly awry. A bunch of individual metrics
(how long till a user can figure out how to create an event, how long till a
user can identify which page they are on, etc.) without a coherent aesthetic
to bind it or any other holistic thinking beyond "make it the same across all
devices".

~~~
Daniel14
> Why get rid of the white text for full day events?

For me, it still displays full day events in white text if I select a dark
color like green, and only uses black text for light colors. The only minor
problem I see is that it also uses the light color I selected for timed
events, which could make them a bit difficult to see on the white background.

> The create button looks gimmicky and cartoonish as well.

It reminded me of Gmail's "Compose mail" button (which is located similarly),
and don't quite understand how it looks gimmicky or cartoonish in comparison.
Because it's red? I would argue it makes sense to make the most important
button on the site a flashy color, but I guess it comes down to a matter of
taste.

Overall, I think this is Google unifying their services and making them look
more alike. Google+ is more than just another social attempt, but rather the
beginning of Google bringing its services together, which seems like a smart
move in countering Facebook by their new CEO.

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streeter
It is like there is 10 years of pent-up design at Google that has been
released all in the last week.

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JohnsonB
Downgrade. Everything is hard to read; why is it necessary to use light grey
text on a white background? The week view requires scrolling to view all hours
of a day (even though it only shows just 1 extra hour). In the week and 4-day
view, its very hard to see the vertical separators that separate between days.
The widgets on the left are all blurred together, and navigating between
different months on the sidebar is done via two very tiny light grey arrows on
a white background (again.)

This is just change for the sake of change without any user experience
improvement.

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stock_toaster
It looks like the favicon is now the day of the month too.

(quite possible that it was always like this, or that it just always shows 30
and it just works because that is the count of today. I honestly never noticed
before though.)

~~~
maxwell
They launched it on Calendar's 5th anniversary in April.

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?fid=02...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?fid=0281c184d28781d70004a270828efa05&hl=en)

~~~
stock_toaster
haha! Thanks for the info.

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yellowredblack
Can we PLEASE lose the paper-on-desk metaphor and have a 7 day calendar that
always shows the next 7 f&*!@##! days!

~~~
jfr
Calendar does have a custom view, which defaults to showing the next "4 Days"
(hint), available in the bar at the top of the calendar view. You can change
it to 7 days if you like in the settings (gear -> Calendar settings -> General
-> Custom view).

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mcastner
I'm starting to appreciate the black bar more and more. At first I was
skeptical, but it fits their new designs pretty well.

~~~
thomaslangston
That's the worse part of their design so far. The gray text is hard to read
and the black bar is distracting on a otherwise light page.

~~~
dmix
> gray text is hard to read and the black bar

That's a conscious design choice.

In the visual hierarchy on the page, the links at the top are secondary to the
main content. So it's better to have them faded out so your eyes aren't drawn
to them.

~~~
jesboat
Fading out the links is all well and good, but that only works when the bar
itself doesn't draw your eyes to it. On my browser (uncostomized Google
Chrome), it is by far the most distinctive element on my screen.

~~~
dmix
I find Facebook's blue header far more distracting than Google's dark grey
one. But noone really complains about that. Maybe because they are used to it.

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jeffchuber
And it is beautiful!

It is albeit, a little hard to differentiate days.

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gsharma
I don't like the left sidebar on new Google calendar. The widgets don't have a
clear distinction anymore.

~~~
zmmmmm
This bugs me too. Further, it seems part of a wider change that you see in
Honeycomb where all unnecessary lines and background colors are removed. It
makes things look very plain and unstructured, it's hard to tell where one
thing starts and another ends and there are very few visual cues about
interactions you can have with the elements.

I think they're trying to fight against the "Apple is simple and easy, Google
is complicated and hard" feeling. But it's not just an equation of how many
lines and colors you have. At some point removing things increases complexity
if it makes your brain work to understand what is on the page.

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aufklarung
Left sidebar and search field are crunching the calendar, the actual thing I'm
using, into a corner on my Gateway EC1803U netbook. I'm pretty sure the left
sidebar can be assimilated into the row of shit under the search field.

~~~
jesboat
Given how much space the non-calendar part takes, I'm also surprised as to how
little content fits in it. In the old calendar, the left sidebar was [in my
standard browser side] big enough to show 6 "My" calendars and 5 "Other"
calendars, with blue borders cleanly delineating the sections, and colored
backgrounds making it easy to visually link calendars' names to their events.

Now, the left sidebar, in addition to wasting ton of space, separates sections
only by slight vertical gaps, makes almost no use of color, and displays [same
screen size] 2 of "My" calendars, and 2 "Other" calendars.

The generally garish color changes, I could live with. Mushing the UI
components together into a sea of whitespace, making them less distinctive,
and wasting most of the screen, on the other hand...

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trustfundbaby
The create button only creates events ... would have thought it'd give you the
option to create tasks as well

