I've noticed a pattern every time any website launches a redesign: users immediately and vehemently dislike it; a couple of months pass; everyone looks back and wonders what the fuss was and would hate to go back to the old design.
I seem to be missing the part of DNA or conditioning that causes most humans to react negatively when anything familiar changes. I'm one of a rare breed who sees changes as intriguing or exciting (to a fault, I almost always like redesigns at first).
Crappy rotating background images are not a feature. I always remove them from every product, desktop, tool I have. I will NOT be "wondering what the fuss was" in a month.
So you have a preference for removing distracting cosmetic (non-functional) features. So do I. I probably will turn the background image off, but I could comfortably live with it.
Maybe I'm inferring too much, but your use of "crappy" and capitalising "NOT" suggests to me that this feature makes you angry. I think it's worth considering whether your reaction is a purely logical one, or partly an emotional one.
Pretty easily. If it's distracting or somehow bad for me, because of the aesthetics, I could dislike it for logical reasons.
If I open up a law firm and then the decorator puts a gigantic mural of H.R. Giger's work on the walls, I'd probably be less than happy, and not because of emotional reasons (although it would be pretty creepy). It'd be bad for business.
Similarly, if Google's new change increases load time or distracts me...
It changes my perception of the browser state, learned through years of familiarization. That I could get used to. But its a bad idea on so many other levels. Its an order of magnitude harder to compress, bogging down remote-terminal operation. It scrambles the desktop metaphor - I have multiple monitors, the browser is just one tool that is open, and now this circus-themed "background" stands out like a beacon but with no functional value whatsoever. It obscures controls (as widely discussed elsewhere) which is plain bad app design. It increases (marginally) load time. It "fades in" creating a distraction for the power user - my desktop doesn't dance around otherwise unless something significant is happening. Honestly, I have to wonder if you aren't emotionally defending Google, because these are mostly obvious reasons to detest this "feature".
>I've noticed a pattern every time any website launches a redesign: users immediately and vehemently dislike it; a couple of months pass; everyone looks back and wonders what the fuss was and would hate to go back to the old design. -spatulon
I've noticed a bias against change too, but sometimes the redesign is just worse. For example, the wait for mouse and then fade-in change to Google is just as obnoxious today as when it went live.
But there is an argument to be made that this makes google look less clean. Even if the background is removed, there is an option in the lower-left corner, begging me to click it and look what is there. I don't really like it but it doesn't mark very high on my care-o-meter
I seem to be missing the part of DNA or conditioning that causes most humans to react negatively when anything familiar changes. I'm one of a rare breed who sees changes as intriguing or exciting (to a fault, I almost always like redesigns at first).