Google Chrome, a Shell for the Web

"In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. We avoid putting things into our UI in the same way you would hope that Apple and Microsoft would avoid putting things into the standard window frames of applications on their operating systems. The tab is our equivalent of a desktop application's title bar; the frame containing the tabs is a convenient mechanism for managing groups of those applications. In future, there may be other tab types that do not host the normal browser toolbar," explains a document about Chrome's user experience.

This philosophical shift might explain why there are few interface distractions and the browser is barely visible. Google Chrome is built for web applications that have their own menus, keyword shortcuts and status bars.


Chrome comes with intelligent defaults to minimize the interaction with the browser. The settings dialog doesn't include many options available in other browsers and the team hopes to "reduce the number of options further". The lack of customization is not a good news for advanced users, but normal users might appreciate the simplicity of the interface.

"The heck with more features, is Safari 3 faster, more stable, less memory-hungry and more compatible on the web at large? That's what I want to see in each release," commented Peter Kasting on an article from 2006 about Safari 3. Peter Kasting is now an engineer in the Google Chrome team.

More Advanced Search Options for YouTube

YouTube added some new options that allow you to filter search results by type. You can restrict the results to videos uploaded by YouTube partners, videos that have annotations or closed captions. There's also an option to restrict the results to feature length videos, but it doesn't seem to work yet.

Use the "partner videos" restriction to get official videos, annotations could be used for additional explanations or interactivity, while closed captions allow you to search inside the text of a video. The closed captioning features has been recently added to YouTube, so you won't find too many subtitled videos.


YouTube's interface doesn't let you combine the restrictions, but you can manually add parameters:

http://www.youtube.com/results?closed_captions=1&annotations=1&search_query=site:youtube.com (videos that have both annotations and closed captions)

http://www.youtube.com/results?partner=1&closed_captions=1&search_query=site:youtube.com (partner videos with closed captions)

Gmail Reply Enhancements

After adding 3 experimental features related to labels, Gmail Labs has 3 new features that deal with replying to messages.

"Quote selected text" changes Gmail's replying behavior and it lets you include a selection from the original message. This is especially helpful when you reply to long messages from people who don't use Gmail. Your reply will only include the necessary context, not the entire message.

This experimental feature works only when you use the keyboard shortcut for replying (r), not when you click on "Reply".


"Reply to all" changes the default replying option when you receive messages addressed to more than one person. Instead of replying only to the sender, the default option changes to "reply to all". Just make sure that your reply is really useful for everyone.

"Vacation time" is an enhancement of the vacation responder that lets you enter when you intend to go on vacation. This way, you won't have to remember to turn on the vacation responder. "While planning my own vacation, I didn't want to worry about composing, starting and stopping my vacation auto-response while I was on vacation. Call me a purist, but that defeats the whole point of being on vacation," explains Darick Tong, the author.


What other features would you like to see in Gmail Labs?

{ via Gmail Blog }

The Missing Doodles

Google started to customize its logo in 1999 for the Burning Man festival, an annual art event that encourages creative self expression.


Since then, Google's Dennis Hwang created hundreds of doodles that celebrate interesting holidays and events, from Halloween to Father's Day, from Picasso's birthday to the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick. Dennis told CNN that the events selected for Google's doodles are the subject of an internal debate. "We talk about interesting holidays that are coming up, or various international holidays or any current events or news events that we think are cool and geeky or 'Google-y' in some sense and then we just sort of give it a go."

In fact, most Google doodles are cheerful, celebrate birthdays and innovations. Instead of creating doodles for any important event, Google chose to decorate its logo for events that have a lot in common with Google's values: excellence, cheerfulness, universality.

Some people noticed that Google choose not to commemorate 9/11. "The murder of 3,000 individuals by Islamic fanatics on September 11, 2001 is, to Google, apparently less important than the first hot air balloon flight, which the company commemorated on June 4 with a stylized logo in which a balloon replaces one of the O's," asserted Paul McDougall from InformationWeek.

Like many times before, Google answered by reminding people that doodles are a part of the company's brand. "The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries around the world that reflect Google's personality and love of innovation. Although we are aware that our list of doodles is not exhaustive, we try to select doodles that show creativity and innovation in a fun, quirky way. Generally, we choose doodles from a variety of categories, such as those that celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of artists and inventors. We try to be sensitive that a doodle is not the most appropriate way to recognize certain events, especially those that are more somber in nature."

Doodles are inherently childish and unpretentious. According to Wikipedia, "a doodle is a type of sketch, an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. They are simple drawings which can have a meaning, a shape or just irregular forms. Doodling is mainly made by young people around the world, notably students. This activity is normally made during long or boring classes as the students begin daydreaming or losing interest."

So you can see doodles as glimpses from an imaginary Googleworld that gathers some of the greatest human achievements. The missing doodles are hidden somewhere inside this drawing:

("Up in the Clouds" by Grace Moon, winner of the Doodle 4 Google US competition)

Table of Contents, Dictionary and Thesaurus in Google Docs

It's no longer necessary to use bookmarklets if you want to add a table of contents in Google Docs because this feature is now available in the interface: Insert > Table of contents. To add a table of contents, your document needs to include headings from the Format menu.

Google Docs actually creates a bookmark for each heading from the document and displays the bookmarks hierarchically using lists. Unsurprisingly, when you open the document in Microsoft Word, the application treats the table of contents created in Google Docs as a list.


You can find more information about a word directly from Google Docs: click on the Tools menu and look up the word in Merriam-Webster's dictionary and thesaurus and in Encyclopædia Britannica.



In the Tools menu, there are two other options that allow you to search the web for the selected text. It would be nice to see the results in a pop-up box and to link to them directly from Google Docs, but this is not yet possible.

{ Thanks, Mike. }

Google Presently Redesigned

The three applications included in Google Docs have never been properly integrated and there's always an interesting feature that is only available in Google Spreadsheets or in the word processor.

Google redesigned Presently and added the old-fashioned menu already included in the word processor. The interface have been streamlined and there's more room for editing slides.

A notable new feature that can be found in the Slide menu is zooming in/out, but the keyboard shortcuts aren't very intuitive: Ctrl+Shift+left/right arrow.

Google Presently today

Google Presently at launch (September 2007)

Better Label Management in Gmail

Gmail Labs added 3 new experiments that improve the way you manage labels.

"Go to label" adds a keyboard shortcut for selecting a label. Gmail already has shortcuts for navigating to the inbox (g+i), drafts (g+d), starred messages (g+s), but you can now type g followed by l to get a box that lets you enter the name of a label. In most cases, you only need to type the first letters of the label and then press Enter.


If you like the colors that can be associated with labels, but you find the number of options too limited, there's a new option to add custom colors by selecting colors for background and text.


Probably the less useful experimental feature, "Navbar drag and drop" lets you reorder the boxes displayed by Google in the left sidebar: Gmail Chat, labels, Quick Links, Invite a friend.

The three new features can be enabled in Gmail Labs, a section available in the new version of Gmail and only for English interfaces.



Related:
Experimental Gmail features
Hidden labels in Gmail

{ via Gmail Blog }