10/16/2008

iGoogle - Bad Design

iGoogle is sporting a new design, and wasting precious real estate with a useless sidebar.

Hey Googlers, how about hiding the sidebar unless you hover over it?

Tip: Copy Google Reader's method of hiding the sidebar

30 comments:

Unknown said...

I hate the new tabs!
They must go!

Eirene said...

I HATE the left tabs, being able to do all my gmail stuff is good, but the left tabs MUST GO!! Or there should at least be an option to do one or the other.

sjust said...

I agree the tabs must go using up to much space plus they didn't even ask

Unknown said...

Hate the side tabs. Hate Hate Hate.

Unknown said...

Totally agree. I hope we can put the tabs back up on the top soon. I don't even use the tabs, which makes it even worse on the left.

Aaron Jones said...

I agree, it looks terrible. It made my headache worse and screwed up my feeds. I kept trying to find a switch for the old layout.

Unknown said...

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but what were they thinking?! I hate what they've done and to not even let us restore to yesterday's version or go back to the way things were. The tabs in the top header worked just fine. This sucks. I may just have to go back to my old Yahoo home page...

Mike said...

I used to love iGoogle. I hate this new layout. I want my top tabs back. They had long names, now I cannot read them. Besides that, I HATE left sidebars. They should at least give you the option of changing the sidebar and having dropdowns from the top. I am addicted to iGoogle, but this might make me go cold turkey on it. bleah.

Ellie said...

Much, much, much, much, much.... and a bunch more muches -- Too Busy!!

I don't like the left bar and all these rss feeds that I have now have summaries for 3 posts!!

I liked having the 3 post titles but not all this other stuff!

Give us the option to switch back!

Unknown said...

As a designer who WAS going to use iGoogle in an 85M household market design --

The new look is unacceptable BAD "design" because adding two lines of the story under the headlines is adding JUNK clutter.

The writing world is not at present writing those first few words so they are meaningful at all. It just adds blah blah.

What was great design is now a visual mess.

The left index bar is visual JUNK because you can't read it at a glance.

Plus, how do you port new gadgets or feed additions into a different tab category now that tabs are gone?

The answer may be there somewhere but it is no longer intuitive -- as drag & drop was intuitive.

I am serious, iGoogle/Google. I will not make this visual mess the basis of any future work with my 85 million household market.

HELP! PEOPLE WHO KNOW ... how do you actually talk to Google Corporate via their many cluttery blog comment areas???!!! Please drop me a line with any cues on that.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Does Google have too many people with time on their hands in their 20% projects? What is Google/ iGoogle THINKING?!

Google MUST make this new change for the junkier an OPTION. Let Google users vote with a click before they vote with their feet.

Google Corporate, we need to talk about this 85 million household market ASAP!

[email protected]

Unknown said...

Very stupid. Goodbye, Google. I'll be going back to Hotmail and Yahoo.

David Gordon said...

The new design is apparently much better for developers.

Hope they have some users left

Breeze said...

yuck! yuck! yuck!

Unknown said...

Maybe the tabs at the side design is OK on a wide monitor, but on mine, it's a PITA. The added line of Email is useless, unnecessary clutter at best and a security problem at worst. The best thing about IGoogle was its clean design, it still isn't as bad as some of the others, but it is not what it was.

Unknown said...

What the heck?! I refreshed the page and now all of my feeds and gadgets are crammed. While I appreciate the thought process behind the new functionality, I absolutely agree with the other complaints; the new left tab is a terrible design addition (however good their intentions) and an incredible waste of precious real estate. Not only that, you've just hosed up all of my selected content, squeezing things into wrapped lines, and making the entire page must less appealing and user-unfriendly. The engineers can easily put these tabs across the top (where they belong), or make them fully hide-able, so the content takes up the page width, not useless navigation. Come on, Google, you know better than this!

Scriptdaemon said...

I find it hard to believe that 100% of the posts here were negative. There are a few tweaks that should occur (gadget name reordering on the side menu, cleaner summary area for RSS feeds, etc.), but overall I actually enjoy the new layout much more than what it was before.

Anonymous said...

please remove the "home" drop-down list on the left. it sucks! why can't i remove it if i want? i've been thinking of not even using igoogle because all of the headlines on the news sites are depressing fear-laced hysteria. now i have an even better reason to stop using igoogle. the "home" bullshit on the left side. that really blows! REMOVE IT NOW!

said...

Another vote anti-left-tabs...see tens (hundreds?) more on Web Search Google Group...is Google listening?

Anonymous said...

I can only wonder that they were thinking. It's not just the poor usability, but they actually scrunch up the existing gadgets and the one I use most I have to view with scrollbars. Scrollbars on a gadget...sheesh!

Paul said...

Lousy design. When I first logged in I thought something had happened to my monitor settings!

I loved the old, easy-to-use tabs at the top of the page. The sidebar is a useless gimmick that kills space and doesn't give me any easier or faster access to what I want. I fear that these kinds of things are the beginning of the end of Google tools as a user-friendly, user-focused environment. I'd hate to see it become another Yahoo, Netscape or AOL style platform for dumping products on us.

Unknown said...

Amazing how they managed to mess this up completely.

Can't see how the decision for such changes was taken, at the very least it means that they really don't know how ig was utilized and what their users do with it.

Has to change, the way it is now is definitely unusable.

Rob Van Dam said...

Use this style to get back to the old classic theme.

http://userstyles.org/styles/11351

Anonymous said...

Forget iGoogle. Move on with Netvibes http://www.netvibes.com

with a how-to-migrate at http://faq.netvibes.com/how_to_switch_from_my_old_service_to_netvibes#switch_from_google_homepage_to_netvibes

stark247 said...

I read about a site today called 43marks.com - its like iGoogle but better cuz you can add you own bookmarks and the bookmarks can be websites not just gadgets and RSS feeds although you can upload your favorite RSS feeds too. Its free and totally customizable. Plus you don't have to login to see your bookmarks and RSS feeds cuz they give you a unique URL

Unknown said...

I hate the new tabs. They don't add anyting I want to my homepage. If they can't go i guess i will have to.

Unknown said...

The left side tabs are HORRIBLE.
They take up too much space, and I DON"T USE THE LINKS THAT THEY PROVIDE. If they don't give me the option to change back, I'll be dropping igoogle. YES, I am that adamant about it !!!!!

Unknown said...

Please give us the option to go back, the left tab is BAD! I liked the old format and would like to use it again. I have to take extra steps to look at anything. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE just let US choose to use new or old.

JamesR404 said...

I googled before and there is a special url you can use to get rid of the side bar, but now I don't remember it!

Jeez. Why not give the option to remove it to begin with! Or not have it there even!! :(

madbot said...

I don't like the left tabs either. iGoogle let us control the format so well before this. I hope Google makes them left to right collapsable so they don't waste space on my laptop.

Jason Lohner said...

If you are a firefox user there is a way to get rid of this abortion interface change

http://jasonlohner.blogspot.com/2009/11/igoogle-disaster.html