Google docs: Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list | Hacker News Reader

Google docs: Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

googledocs.blogspot.com

37 pointstilt15 comments

Am I the only one who thinks that even though new look is similar among all the updated google products (gmail, docs, cal) but it doesn't feel consistent?

http://www.picamatic.com/show/2011/08/05/07/33/7755256_1056x...

- actions toolbar looks very different across products (actions super button in Docs is terrible)

- docs doesn't have 'refresh' button -- if you add it, add it everywhere, please. Also it's not the same in cal and gmail

- docs and calendar has this line which separate actions toolbar with product name and body but gmail doesn't. Also Docs has differently aligned product name and google logo

- even search on top of the page is different (different buttons, label styles, text field sizes)

- documents/email list in docs and gmail looks and behaves in completely different way

- next/previous buttons are completely different (gmail, cal)

- and many more...

I do like new theme but, please, Google, make it more consistent.

Giving all the different products is the relatively easy part. Once that is complete I expect that the button styles, interfaces, etc will start being more consistant too. It is after all still early and in preview.

I'm not really

a fan of the padding

on these "new looks".

Also, I liked the little headers that said earlier this week, earlier this month, etc.; why did those have to go?

You can condense the rows (a bit) with a "use denser view" option in the settings. I have my docs pretty heavily broken out into folders, so it works for me.

My biggest usability complaint is how you land on a long list of all your documents, potentially going back months or years. Like Amazon's "product suggestions" for items I browsed months ago, I find this more annoying than relevant. If they only initially showed me documents I've opened in the last month, I think it would be an example of "less is more".

Woah seriously? Google needs to cool it on the padding and add a little bit more definition/differentiation to the different app areas. This is getting a little bit out of hand; brains need at least a little bit of direction to know where to look.

I don't see anything wrong with the spacing, I like it better, but I agree on the thought of giving a different look to the left sidebar... it would be nice to have a color hierarchy.

Also, they removed the colors from the folders in the sidebar and in the document list its now the font color and not the background color, what makes it difficult to see which ones are in which folders.

Yeah, even in "dense mode" the padding is still way to much. In the old version I could see 32 files vs 20 in the new version. That's a major step backwards.

And I agree that the lack of visual page structure makes it hard to look at and use. I generally favor a clean look but this is a bit extreme.

Who do I plead to at google to make their android app remotely usable for google docs?

I really like the "?" method of bringing up keyboard shortcuts.

Somewhere, an animated paperclip (i.e. Clippy) died a tragic death.

This is 2nd time this year Google Docs is changing the look and layout of their interface. The first change was as recent as March this year. This is really bad.

Me, as a heavy google docs user, want some consistency. Managing and editing docs this is not some "lol cats" thing. I hope somebody from Google Docs team is reading this.

Google seems to have decide that red equals "create" -- all the new designs have a red button for creating a new message / document / ...

My brain's having a lot of trouble with this. I'd be really interesting in the reasoning that went into re-mapping a color usually used for "stop" or "delete" or "danger" onto "create".

Too much white space . Why isn't there a dense version for people with a lot of documents ?

also, I had set my folders to have different colors for a reason, which was that it let me see my documents in color-coded fashion. Now everything looks the same. It's visually pretty, but I'm pretty sure the person who came up with this doesn't actually use Google Docs on a regular basis.

Stop trying to be Apple.

There's a dense version in the Google Docs options. Also, it's a preview of it, they haven't forced it down anyone's throat yet. That's why it's a preview: so you can give them feedback.

How is this like Apple exactly?

Even the dense version is still much less dense than classic.

All the other Google redesigns have the same problem so I'm not sure that it is a preview matters at this point. Someone at Google really likes the wide spacing and a I presume the dense option was a compromise (that didn't go far enough).

Disconnecting the theme selection and density option makes no sense from a UX standpoint. Although I actually like the new color scheme, it's lacking in a number of ways, not least the inability to visually differentiate between different google accounts (I have 2).

The reason I compare it to Apple is that the Google settings menu often has too few options. I don't want all my troubles simplified away, I want choice and configurability. I like advanced mode.

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