Google's Hidden Navigation Menu

As previously anticipated, Google will drop the black navigation bar and will use a simplified navigation interface that will make the transition between two Google products seamless. Google+ notifications, the sharing box and the profile menu will be displayed next to the search box, while the list of Google services will be placed in a drop-down menu next to the Google logo.

"The Google bar, which runs across the top of the browser of nearly all Google services and offers easy access to Google's products, has recently updated its look for a more consistent, streamlined user experience and increased visibility of the most popular services," explains Google.

The new navigation interface no longer uses additional space, it's more compact and the short list of Google services that's displayed by default matches Google's simplified product line. The menu links to Google+, Web Search, Image Search, Google Maps, YouTube, Google News, Gmail and Google Docs, but you can mouse over "More" to see additional services. Here are the services that have never been included in the navigation bar until now: Google Wallet, Google Offers, Google Music, Google Mobile and Blogger.

While the new interface looks modern, it's also less user-friendly because the navigation links are hidden behind a drop-down menu and the average user might not be able to find them. Android's menu button wasn't a great idea and Ice Cream Sandwich made menus more visible, so it's not clear if this is going to work. Google's homepage will expand the product menu by default, but it will be interesting to see if Google users will actually notice that mousing over the Google logo lets them access Gmail, Google Docs and other services.

I don't see the new interface yet, but it's likely that it will be rolled out in the coming days.

Update: try the new interface.

Smooth Scrolling in Google Reader

Google Reader's settings page has a new section where you'll find "experiments you can choose to opt-in and try out". It's like a small Google Reader Labs that only has a single experiment you can enable: smooth scrolling. This feature makes the transition between items smoother and it's especially useful in the expanded view.

While this feature is more difficult to find, you've probably noticed the colorful ball that's displayed when Google Reader loads new posts. The animation is one of the few colorful elements from the new Google Reader interface.

{ Thanks, Venkat. }

Cached Pages in Google Mobile Search

Maybe it's not so obvious, but the link to the cached version of a search result is still available when you're using Google Search on a mobile phone. Just like in the desktop interface, you need to click the Instant Preview icon (a magnifier) and you'll find the "cached" link.

For some reason, the links to the mobile formatted version and to the list of similar pages are no longer displayed. To go back to the old interface that displayed all these links next to the search results, bookmark http://www.google.com/m or replace "google.com/search" with "google.com/m/search" in the URL (just add the two characters in bold).

Google's Broken Drop-Down Lists

Google has recently redesigned the advanced search page and removed two options that weren't used very often: finding pages that are similar to a page and pages that link to a page. You can use the similar: and link: operators and "similar pages" and still available in the Instant Preview pane, so the features haven't been removed.

What's disconcerting is that Google made drop-down lists a lot more difficult to use in the new interface. Until now, you could use the tab key to select a list, but this no longer works. After clicking a list, you could use the up/down arrows or Page Up / Page Down to move between the options, but you can no longer do that. It was much faster to type the first letters from the name of the language or the country to quickly find an item, but this is another feature that no longer works. Basically, the only way to use the new lists is to scroll up or down until you find the item you were looking for.

Google's lists are also inaccessible to screen readers, so they can't be used by people who are blind or visually impaired. The explanation is that Google now uses regular lists with custom styles instead of drop-down lists (or drop-down menus). Disable CSS and you can no longer select an item from the list.

You can check the old advanced search page at the Wayback Machine or the advanced image search page, which still uses the old interface.

Another service that makes drop-downs more difficult to use is Blogger. If you have a long list of labels, you can no longer find a label by typing the first letters.

Google Reader's new interface lets you use arrows to move between the items from a list, but you can no longer type some letters from a subscription's name in the "All items" drop-down. This was a non-standard featured added back in 2007, when Google Reader added a search engine.

Hopefully, Google will address these issues and will no longer remove basic features that are taken for granted by many users.

Restrict Google Results to Mobile Apps

Google's search engine for mobile apps is now available in the sidebar. Just click "More" in the left sidebar and select "applications" to restrict the results to Android and iOS applications. The results aren't only from Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market: you'll also find results from AppBrain, AndroidZoom, CNet and more. Unfortunately, you can't restrict the results to iOS apps or Android, find iPad apps or filter the apps by rating or price.

Here are the results for [games]. The search engine doesn't have a proper homepage, but you can bookmark this page.

The search engine for mobile apps was initially available in the mobile version of Google Search as an OneBox, and then as a search option. Earlier this year, Google added support for app-related rich snippets.

Google Help Forums Migrate to Google Groups

Back in 2009, many of the official Google discussion groups moved from Google Groups to a new platform called "Google Help Forums". Now it's time for them to go back to Google Groups.

"Over the next several months, we'll be migrating our 250+ help forums in 20+ languages to the new Google Product Forums platform. Built on the new Google Groups, Google Product Forums provide users with a fresh interface and robust features for asking questions and discussing our products. The new platform brings some exciting new features to our forums. For example, you can now select between starting a discussion or asking a question, quickly indicate your own interest in a question that has been asked by voting 'Me too!,' and easily share a topic with your circles on Google+," explains Google.

Google+ and Chromebooks Central already use the new platform and you'll be able to find the upcoming forums if you bookmark this odd URL.

{ Thanks, Herin. }

Google Discontinues Knol, Friend Connect and Other Services

Google closed a lot of services this year, but there are still a few projects that weren't successful enough and have to be discontinued. Probably the last batch of services that bite the dust includes: Google Bookmarks Lists, Google Friend Connect, Google Gears, Google Wave and Knol. Google also removed the timeline search option, which created "a graph of historical results for a query".

Google Friend Connect will be replaced by Google+ pages. It will still be available until March 1, 2012 for non-Blogger sites, while the Blogger feature will continue to work for a few more months. Google Wave will become read-only on January 31 and it will be closed 3 months later. The Gears-based offline mode will no longer work in Google Calendar and Gmail starting from next month, so if you're still using an old version of Firefox or Internet Explorer for this feature, you'll have to switch to Chrome. Bookmarks Lists will continue to work until December 19, but I'm sure that not many people will miss it.

Knol is a project that attracted experts who wrote a lot of interesting articles, but it wasn't successful enough to make a difference. After all, Knol was a niche service and Google's goal is to "focus on products that can benefit the most people and solve the most important problems". Google informs that "Knol will work as usual until April 30, 2012, and you can download your knols to a file and/or migrate them to WordPress.com. From May 1 through October 1, 2012, knols will no longer be viewable, but can be downloaded and exported. After that time, Knol content will no longer be accessible." Why not preserve the content? Some Google Answers pages are still useful after so many years.

It's interesting that all these projects, except for the Gears plugin and the timeline option, had a social component. Now that Google+ is Google's social hub, it makes sense to replace these projects with Google+ features.