Google Groups Has a New Interface

Google Groups is the latest Google service redesigned to look like Google+. New buttons, new icons, new scrollbars, new search box and a smoother interface that makes Google's help forums look outdated.

Since the current Google Groups UI is inspired by Google Reader, we can expect to see a revamped Google Reader with a similar interface.



If you miss the small arrow that allowed you to hide the sidebar, use the "f" keyboard shortcut, which hides both the sidebar and the search box.


{ Thanks, Filipe, François and Elchanan. }

iPhone App for Blogger

Blogger has an app for iPhone and it's better than the corresponding Android app, which has improved a lot in the past months. Both apps let you edit your existing posts and create new posts, add images to your posts, include labels and geolocate your posts.

They're pretty basic, but the iPhone app has a better interface, it's easier to use and pays attention to detail. For example, the iPhone app includes the URL of the blog next to the name when you switch to a different blog, so that it's easier to identify a blog. The Android app only shows the names. To publish a post in the iPhone app, you need to tap the "Publish" button, which is always displayed at the top of the screen. In the Android app you need to scroll to the bottom of the post to find the "publish" button.



"With the Blogger app, you can write a new blog post and publish it immediately or save it as a draft right from your iOS device. You can also open a blog post you've been working on from your computer and continue editing it while you're on-the-go. Your blog posts are automatically synced across devices, so you’ll always have access to the latest version," informs Google.

Customize Google Docs Interface

If you switched to the new Google Docs interface and wondered why there's so much whitespace, I have a good news for you: Google Docs has two new options for adjusting display density. Click the new settings drop-down and select one of the three options: comfortable (the default option), cozy and compact (similar to the old interface). My favorite option is "cozy", which is both clean and compact.




Another change is that the details pane is no longer a sidebar. If you want to find more information about a document, select it and click "Details". Google Docs will display an overlay that includes a large thumbnail, sharing information, the list of collections where you placed the document and some other information.


There's also a button for sharing the selected documents and some new icons for documents, spreadsheets, drawings, presentation and other files.

{ Thanks, Tom. }

Fusion Tables, a New Google Docs App

Aaron, a reader of this blog, spotted a new option in Google Docs: creating tables. It seems that Google Docs started to integrate with Fusion Tables, a little-known Google service that lets you manage large data sets.


I don't see "table (beta)" in Google Docs, so this could be a slow rollout or just a limited experiment. Fusion Tables already has a Google+ interface:


"Google Fusion Tables is a modern data management and publishing web application that makes it easy to host, manage, collaborate on, visualize, and publish data tables online." You can find some examples in the gallery. There are also many tutorials that help you create tables and turn them into maps.

{ Thanks, Aaron. }

New Advanced Image Search Page

Google updated the interface of the advanced image search page to look just like the corresponding Web search page. The redesigned page is easier to use, it groups the search options and includes some of the options that were only available in the sidebar.


Here's the old UI:


Why use the advanced search page instead of using the sidebar? Some of the options aren't available in the sidebar: restricting the results to a filetype, finding Creative Commons images, finding images from a domain or from a country.

There's one feature that's no longer available in the new interface. Can you find it?

iGoogle's New Interface

Google's personalized homepage has a new interface inspired by Google+. There's a prominent button for adding gadgets, a unified menu for gadgets that's hidden until you mouse over a gadget, an option to hide the sidebar and a bigger search box that supports voice search if you use Chrome. The links to the advanced search page and language tools page have been removed, while the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is only displayed below the list of suggestions,



{ Thanks, Tim. }

Google Redirects Some Chrome Users to the Encrypted Search Interface

Google's encrypted version has all the features of the standard version and Google could redirect users to the more secure interface. You can now search images, use Google Instant, Instant Preview and other features that were missing from Google SSL. The navigation links are still missing and Google Maps doesn't support SSL yet.

A Google employee says that Google is "running an experiment with some percentage of Chrome 14 users where we send them to SSL search. The experience is meant to be completely comparable feature-wise to non-SSL search. It is independent of the Chrome 14 installation." So if you're using Chrome 14 Beta, you might be redirected to Google SSL.



"With Google search over SSL, you can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between your computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides you with a more secure and private search experience," explains Google. An important downside is the loss of performance, but Chrome uses SPDY for all Google URLs, so SSL pages load a lot faster.

{ Thanks, Libran Lover. }

Offline Google Docs

As promised, Google started to roll out the offline version of Google Docs, but don't expect too much. Much like the offline Gmail and offline Google Calendar, Google Docs works offline only if you use Chrome and install an app from the Chrome Web Store.

When you're offline, Google Docs shows a simplified interface that only lists the documents and spreadsheets that are cached. You can only view them, so most of the features from Google Docs menus are disabled.




Just like the offline Gmail, Google Docs uses a different interface that can also be accessed when you're online if you go to: https://docs.google.com/offline/. "Offline access is available only for documents and spreadsheets. When you have Google Docs open and have an Internet connection, your most recently opened documents and spreadsheets will sync and become available offline. Presentations, drawings and other items are not currently available offline," explains Google.


Another downside is that you can't edit your documents and spreadsheets, a feature that was available in the Gears implementation.


Right now, offline Google Docs is very limited and can only be used to access some of your documents and spreadsheets. It's interesting to notice that the apps powered by Gears were a lot more powerful and worked in other browsers: Firefox, Safari, IE. Maybe Google shouldn't have deprecated Gears and disabled the features that used Gears until the HTML5 implementations were good enough.

Switch to the Classic Google Search Interface on a Tablet

Google's search interface for tablets is great, but it lacks some of the features from the regular interface. One of the most important missing features is the link to the cached search results. Sometimes a site goes down, a page changes a lot or redirects you to a stripped-down mobile interface and Google's cache is really useful.



Now you can switch between the tablet interface and the classic interface using a link displayed at the bottom of the search results page: "View Google in: Tablet | Classic". The nice thing is that Google remembers the query and sends you to the same page of results.







Other missing features from the tablet interface: the number of search results, the link to the advanced search page, the "something different" section, the smart sidebar that shows the most relevant specialized search engines and options, while hiding the other features. While these options are still available in the tablet interface, Google no longer highlights those that are the most relevant.



To switch to the classic interface, Google adds "&nota=1" to the URL (there's a similar parameter for the mobile interface: "&nomo=1"). While there's no way to permanently switch to the classic interface, you can bookmark this URL to access it: http:/www.google.com/webhp?nota=1.