29 replies to this topic

[Little Asterisk]

Information from Google's Blogspot blog indicates that there'll be some cool improvements in the Google Image Search showcase.

Firstly, we won't be looking at ugly text anymore, but the images will be presented in the form of a nice grid, which in turn allows for more images to be displayed in a single page.



They say that they'll also be utilizing keyboard shortcuts in the new layout (like Page Down/Page up keys), probably for faster scrolling through pages.

The full list of new stuff follows:

• Instant scrolling between pages
  
• Larger thumbnail previews
  
• A hover pane, which gives you a large preview upon mouse hover
  
• A new landing page, which means no more click-click-get to image. Now you only have to pick the image once.
  
• Dense tiled layout

There'll also be some new kind of image advertisement, but you can read all about it on the Google blog.

[mahesh2k]

I just hope this search feature doesn't restrict dial up and slow internet connection users from searching. I see that new google search page is ajax based and takes some time to load. I hope they don't screw up with this new search improvements with too much ajax.

[web_designer]

i like this feature, i use google search A LOT, especially google image search. so adding anew feature will make things more fun and easy, as i hope. but not more slow loading. i already have a slow internet connection. anyway,thank you for sharing little asterisk .

[Little Asterisk]

web_designer, on 22 July 2010 - 12:02 AM, said:

i like this feature, i use google search A LOT, especially google image search. so adding anew feature will make things more fun and easy, as i hope. but not more slow loading. i already have a slow internet connection. anyway,thank you for sharing little asterisk .

You're welcome, web_designer.

I also think this will improve Google search.

[andresf91]

The looks are great... quite impressive really. But, it always come handy to know from which page it comes from and the size, don't you think?
It would be much better if they added just a thin bar at the bottom, like a second status bar that are so popular these days (like Facebook's bottom bar but not that intrusive), only to show the file size, resolution and website...
I don't know, I just wanted to share this idea, as I see every that Google search going bloated more and more, full of ajax stuff, news headlines, images inline, even Twitter updates on a topic! And I often just want to get to a site I'm searching for, but no, wait, I have to scroll down the page because of this new "features"!
(I felt I had to leave the record that I complain when functionality because of design... now I'll stop whining.)

[magnafrost]

I tried it, and its awesome! But maybe I'm imagining it but google always has a way of making people say "Wow!" even if they are not the first ones to introduce something to the world. For all you know, there might be a hundred other search engines out there that have a better way of displaying images but google is the one that gets a Wow! But yes, I do like the new interface for ONE reason(ya just one). I don't have to go page by page. One scroll bar and thats it. Makes it easier for me. Though, I'm sure dial-up users will be cursing google right now.

[Harlot]

I really don't like the new look, and I prefer the old way. If something is not broke, than it shouldn't be fixed. It Google Images was more simple before, and that is how most people like it. It seems like websites are trading in simplicity and becoming more complicated. Even face book recently redesigned their events page, when it was in fact already fine.

[Little Asterisk]

So, I've also checked out the current version of Google search, and my feeling is both good and "bad", but I still think they've made a great job with it.

At first, the search seems a bit slower since they need to load at least two pages of images (as it seems to me) and prepare the neat effects, but after that it's excellent! Pages after that load very fast, images become a bit bigger upon scrolling, and the information also appears when you hover.

It's cool that it shows the page number above the images, and the effects are neat (not that the overall feel wouldn't work without them). I don't know about someone who has a faster internet connection, but now it seems as if the "next step" (the "between-image") loads a bit slower, but perhaps it's because of my internet speed (slowness).

As I said, I'm having mixed feelings about this and I'm going to have to start using it for some time to make a final decision.

[rpgsearcherz]

This is a very cool change. I don't see why they usually have all the text anyways -- when I'm looking for pictures/images my goal is to find pictures/images, not to find text.

I hope they add options on how many to display at once though -- it would suck to be in an area with a semi-slow connection and be forced to load 50 images at once.

[Little Asterisk]

Reviving this topic which almost became dead (outrage! ), Google also is considering improving the "regular" Web search in the browser. It should have an Ajax-like functionality, where the results would update as soon as you would type a term into the search bar.

Now, I am more sceptical about this "feature" than the image search (turn out to be quite OK), but we shall see what they will bring us. Fingers crossed!

Until we can see and test the new search bar features in action, we can only feast (I hope that's the right word ) our eyes on this demonstration (I hope it doesn't take too much bandwidth or PC power to actually load the results in an environment like that):