New Google+ is beautiful?

&#62;&#62; "First, images are out-of-proportionally big. They steal the attention away from the texts... You eyes will inevitably look at Larry’s face and the new Android Studio but did you notice much of the text at all?"<p>I think this is the point. I can immediately tell what these posts are about via the image without having to read anything. I can then read the details if I want. Also, If G+ is anything like Facebook one of the most shared content types is photos so it makes sense to prioritise them.<p>&#62;&#62; Third problem, the lack of discipline in using the whitespace. Whitespace is one of the most powerful, visually pleasing and least intrusive way to bring orders and visual hierarchies to a design. Yet what do you think of the whitespace in this Best of #Python page?"<p>This seems like a bad example. Normally that whitespace (the link) would contain an image and some text previewing the link. They just couldn't parse it from the webpage. In this case the OP just picked an example to fit his complaint.

I commented earlier that I had a hard time figuring out the chronological order of the posts in the stream. I've learned since that Google doesn't want us to care about that. Fine, that's their prerogative. But now I have a new problem: I don't know how to read this thing at all. I can't read it "by column," that is, one column after the other, because it's infinite scroll. But I can't read it "by line" either, because there are no lines, given that the posts have different heights. This is mildly annoying in two-column mode, and impossible in three-column mode (to which it switches automatically if the space is there). How do you read this, particularly in three-column mode, and be reasonably sure not to miss a post?

Seems to be operating under the assumption that text = photos for the user. My observations of social networks has definitely not borne that out. People love photos. Due to the demographics of Google+, What's Hot is skew toward tech news. But I am pretty sure the intention of Google+ is not to provide news, but to appeal to the general public. General public loves pictures.

Everyone loves to dress it up with "facts" and "data", but I have always been and will continue to be confident in viewing these sorts of posts as barely-glorified change aversion. Three weeks from now everyone will prefer this iteration.

I find the two-column layout hard to deal with. I think I have figured out an algorithm for visually determining the chronological order of the posts, without having to read the timestamp in each post. But my algorithm requires considerable visual and intellectual effort. Is there an intuitive way to see the chronology of the posts? BTW, I'm not a huge fan of facebook's two-column layout either, but at least the arrows pointing to the time axis show the order of the posts.

If one of the smaller guys had created this UI and had built H+ for example, they'd have been showered with praise. We've come to expect some kind of magic from Google. UI/ UX always has some trade offs, and I think the decisions taken are wise. I love the auto-hiding sidebar, and the plethora of options to respond add to the responsiveness of the app. They've rethought hashtags too. Quite a nice experience in my opinion.

I am a Google Fan Boy. The new G+ is simply horrid.

I agree with the premise of this article. It looks "pretty", but I can't look at the page and easily navigate. While obviously part of the issue might be I'm not used to the new design, but there needs to be some kind of "intuitive" factor, right? But just my opinion obviously.

Someone should do a comedy video of them sitting in a car where every time you change your seating position all the controls re-arrange and change size.

Great, my employer switched to Microsoft Forefront as a firewall, and now this site is blocked because it has "dong" in the name.

My main concern regarding the new Google+ is how slow and resource consuming it is. Using Firefox 21 on OSX, scrolling is just a continuous pain, and my browser hangs up quite often with the Rainbow Wheel of Death. Switching to the single column layout gets things better, but still, far from being a slick experience.<p>Regarding the design, they gave the ability to switch back to a single column layout. Still people complain about the new design, just switch back if you don't like it.

Anything designed around non-uniform rows and columns is immediately a no-no in my book. I was very pleased when Facebook reverted that change back to the single column

I find it makes more sense when you're zoomed out enough to have it rearrange itself into 3 columns vs 2.<p>When its at 2 columns I waste a lot of eye and brain strength trying to make some order out of it. But when its at 3 columns my brain just stops trying to make any sense of order and just starts consuming content.

Can anyone find the 27 actions? I find only one, add a school. the rest is just normal interwebs stuff. if you feel that every link is a must-click, even button a must-do, and every post a must-read (all contents), you have to rethink your web experience.<p>Personally I feel the images made me read the post instead of skip it altogether. I feel the white is indeed a bit much, luckily a lot of people add pictures to fill that up (pun intended). I dare to say that pictures are to a post, what icons are to your desktop. Try removing all icons from your desktop and just use textual shortcuts. That will make sure it is a pain to get in a glance what is there.<p>Lucky for people like the poster, google tends to make stuff configurable. As said before you can tune things (a bit) to your likings.

My experience with the iPhone app has been pretty bad. Functionally it's passable, but from a design/presentation/aesthetic perspective it's just plain bad.<p>The hamburger-button menu which slides in from the left overlaps the content, but the notifications panel which slides in from the right pushes the content out of the way. Inconsistencies like these break my mental model of where I am in an app.<p>The pull-to-refresh rainbow zebra stripes look awkward, don't provide any hints about what's going on, and are inconsistent with the folding circle animation that Google uses in its other iOS apps (like Gmail).<p>This business of having cards fly in diagonally as you scroll bothers me too. It's cute the first couple of times, but breaks the flow when you're trying to read from top-to-bottom.

The main problem I see with these types of layouts is that if you are displaying reverse chronological content, it needs to be in a single column.<p>Items that have no bearing on when it was posted, i.e. Pintrest, can adapt just fine to this multi-column layout.

Let's see if The Oatmeal is right this time too about new user interfaces:<p><a href="http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout" rel="nofollow">http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout</a><p>(see second part)

It's interesting that Google+ switched to the tile-style method of presenting information immediately after Facebook tried that with Timelines and failed miserably.

Wow, if this author hates the new G+, he better steer clear of Facebook then. If you said pick the social network where numerous large images, too many actions, and lack of whitespace was a problem, I'd say 1 in a 1000 would pick G+.<p>Plus, the too many actions argument is silly. Each post constitutes at least one action, usually a few. Just the way of the social network world.

Just switched my stream back to single-column mode and realized something: Google have now resurrected Google Buzz.

I just checked. Perhaps it's my circles (which have a heavy tech bent) but I really don't see meaningful stuff there. Mostly images are I/O related stuff that I don't honestly care about (do I want to see an animated image of someone giving a preso?)

Reading this I just get the urge to replace the word Google+ with Windows 8.

Did anyone else notice that they just changed how chat windows look today to be more like the new google plus?

I prefer open source social networks. And decentralized with that, such as Diaspora.

What is G+? They need a lot more then that to beat fb!

&#62; It looks pretty because of the two high quality photos which have taken up the majority of screen real estate. You eyes will inevitably look at Larry’s face<p>&#62; looks pretty… Larry’s face