Hah! A couple of weeks back I was working (face-time) with a client, trying to figure out some bizarre website behaviors on a project.
Every time we loaded the Google home page, it did the fade in thing, and I couldn't replicate it on any of my systems, even though the client was hooked into my local network at the time.
It drove me nuts, doubly so since I couldn't find any evidence of it happening to anyone else. I finally concluded that either Google had done something funky with their page code, or something was hosed up in a bizarre way in her copy of IE 8.
I'm not sure I really see the point of this. I mean the fade lasts for approx. 3 seconds, by which time I have hardly got my cursor to the search box let alone started typing. I agree they could reduce some of the other visual noise on the page but this seems... unnecessary.
[edit] I also use the top left controls an awful lot to access gmail etc. since I have google set as my homepage. Now I have to wait before I can access these? Poor usability. [/edit]
It seems like if you move your mouse, the homepage will show everything. The idea seems to be just go to google.com, and type what you want to search without moving your mouse.
They are making you wait so that users on their happy path have less distractions.
Worth noting that the animation lasts about half a second, not three. And that people on the happy path will not need to wait. And that the main problem isn't the wait, but that if you want Mail or News you have to move the mouse before you know where to click, so the initial movement will be in the wrong direction.
If the fade in elements stay in the same places, then won't low-level/muscle memory take care of the initial movement being usually in the right direction?
I'd entertain the possibility, but I'm not sure. I hardly ever access google.com directly. I mostly use Chrome, where I search from the address bar directly, and in Safari and Firefox I search using the "g %s" bookmark from the address bar. I have gmail as a thumbnail in the Chrome new tab start page, and in other browsers I type it in directly.
So, no anecdotes from me. Hopefully the Google guys have tested this themselves, and perhaps it does happen.
I'm sure you're not alone. My beau gets motion sickness at the sight of some GUIs, and I get seizures from same. Hence, I will not be taking a look at Google's new homepage, and I'm going to warn him about this change.
I think it serves some purpose. Google's homepage is so plain you could almost mistake it for being antiquated and neglected. This little fade effect is a subtle reminder that it's simplistic by design.
Their metrics indicate that it works, and I'm inclined to believe the hard evidence over the vague guidelines of the UI textbooks. Besides, Google is used extremely frequently. They may want an interface that is efficient rather than one that is immediately intuitive.
I think the number of people who will be confused, frustrated, or won't be able to find something they were looking for on the google homepage due to this change is pretty close to zero.
Calling this "hiding controls" is a rather terrible way to frame the discussion.
Less is more, more or less. If they can get away with hiding unimportant controls, the few important controls left will be more prominent and possibly easier to use.
What is more interesting to notice is the aggressive use of Javascript on Google's homepage as for long Google has tried to keep the old browsers without JS support in mind. This indicates that the web is rapidly moving towards more advanced browsers.
With chrome now Google has a vested interest in pushing the benefits of JavaScript in web applications, then telling IE users that chrome will improve performance.
One nice benefit of the change is that the home page now looks much nicer in a "top sites" or "speed dial" or whatever you want to call it mode. It stands out.
Few weeks back, on my friend's IE8, the homepage was missing the Google Search and I'm Feeling Lucky Buttons. So they're probably just testing it on select users still, or testing it on IE 8.
In general, the home page of an organization tells you everything you need to know about its internal structure. Companies that don't know what they're doing have confusing home pages. A focused company has a very clean home page. This is one step beyond even that.
Say what you will about Google, but name any other big web property that innovates on core services like this. Facebook maybe. Who else?
Amazon. I know many will complain about how they're cluttered, but Amazon is very test-centric and is constantly evolving their site based on statistical testing to improve the business metrics that matter to them.
I'm skeptical. It's a distracting feature. And I have to wait for it to fade back in to find the link to switch modes. It's distracting. Worse, this scheme stinks of that "too cool for its own good" flavor, which means it's going to be implemented badly all over the web by next week. Did I mention it's distracting?
Every time we loaded the Google home page, it did the fade in thing, and I couldn't replicate it on any of my systems, even though the client was hooked into my local network at the time.
It drove me nuts, doubly so since I couldn't find any evidence of it happening to anyone else. I finally concluded that either Google had done something funky with their page code, or something was hosed up in a bizarre way in her copy of IE 8.
Thanks, Google.