Google Sightseeing v3 (beta)
Tuesday, 8th June 2010 by Alex Turnbull
Do not adjust your internet devices - you may (or may not) be seeing our brand new design for 2010!
We're doing some testing of the new design before a full launch, so if you are seeing our new design please use the "Feedback" button on the left hand side of this page to report any strangeness you spot.
The new design will be launching properly really soon, and we'll update you with more info when that happens.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Glad to see you have finally manged it 😉 At the moment I have to admit I find the new design a bit ‘busy’ and not as neat and clean as the previous one. But I’m sure over time it will become just as natural to navigate.
But for testing purposes you might want to send people here via a link from the ‘old’ site. I (and I’m sure this is true for a lot of people) start my browser with a number of different tabs. When I came to this one I VERY nearly clicked it shut, thinking it was a pop-up one of the other sites must have opened … it just didn’t have anything that immediately identified it as GS. Just my two cents worth 😉
Other than that: Good job boys 🙂
I like the new layout. It seems logically and cleanly laid out.
If I was nitpicking I would reduce the white space at the top of the right hand column moving Welcome to Google Sightseeing level with the article title. I would also move the RSS/Twitter followers box below the Welcome to.. and change the colours/formatting to be more consistent with the rest of the page.
Well done
Yes, this is a bug!
Most of the other ad spaces collapse when an ad blocker is running, but this one doesn’t (for various technical reasons that I shan’t go into) – I’ll see if I can come up with a solution for you Bob 🙂
Yes I do run with Adblock plus and Flashblock enabled, viewing in IE I can see the ads. Unlike some sites you haven’t gone over the top with number of ads. I still think it would make sense to move your ‘Welcome’ message up above the ads and to move the RSS/twitter box down.
Are you going to make it easy for us to add avatars to our comments otherwise all of the empty boxes look a bit odd!
I’m not a fan of the floating orange feedback link, just add an entry to the top toolbar or the right column.
Hi Bob – those white boxes are gravatar enabled – if you sign up here: http://en.gravatar.com/
Then you can get an icon (and not just on our site).
I’ll add a link somewhere that makes this obvious. Cheers!
Never hear of Gravatar before so a link would be good. Lets see if my new pic appears now
I included a link in my comment Bob – could you not see it?
http://en.gravatar.com/
Yes I saw and followed the link in your reply, what I meant was that I agree you need a link in the ‘leave a comment’ section of each page so that people not reading this thread know how to create an avatar.
The avatars here seem blurred compared to the previews on the gravatar site. Do you perhaps have the box size wrong?
Also the reply link didn’t appear in your last reply – is there a deliberate limit on the depth of comment nesting
The blurriness is a bug that’s already on my list, thanks.
And there is a limit on the nested-ness a thread can reach, which is deliberate.
I don’t think any previous thread has ever been as complicated as this one!
Also – the feedback link is only temporary – we’ll add a proper feedback link once we get out of this “beta” phase.
Bob – I assume you have an ad blocker running, as that “white space” is filled with Google ads 😉
Why do you make it difficult to go full screen in streetview by almost obscuring the full screen icon in top right corner of pic?
Was hoping you would have attended to this with the redesign.
On the other hand, perhaps there’s a good reason why you want to frustrate the hell out of me. heh!
Nope, this is also a bug! Will add to our list – cheers!
Brilliant, thanks :))
@Rob: I think Bob meant the white squares where the sattelites appear on your posts. You’re not seriously suggesting the white boxes next to our lesser mortals’ posts will be filled with Google ads instead? :p
Tammo – I was replying to Bob’s earlier post, but because he replied to Alex’s post above mine it makes it look like I was replying to that one instead! I meant the white space above the column to the right which is what he was talking about!
Erm, do I need to add a bug? 😉
The comments are nested further in, but perhaps they need to be nested more?
Yes, since both Rob and Tammo used the ‘leave a comment’ at the bottom of the page rather than clicking on the ‘Reply’ button in the post you created New comments rather than linking your replies to my original post.
It would be an interesting if I could sell my Avatar picture space here and on other websites to the highest bidder 🙂
Duh … make that satellites next to Alex’s posts O_o
No accompanying picture when I click on street view tweets links?
Hi luke – I’m not quite sure what you mean by this – can you provide us with a screenshot?
Everything ok now, Alex. Pix are showing up fine now. Was just getting black screen before.
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When I visited the site a few days ago, I was faced with the terrible new design. Today, I was very pleased to see it back to the old design – I hope it stays that way.
The problem with the new design is that you have to do so much clicking to see anything. Based on the titles and brief exert of text, I couldn’t even tell what some posts would be about, so could not decide whether it was worth the click. With the old design, you could just scroll down and either read or skim over each post, which is WAY more user friendly.
If you go with the new design then you’ll lose a reader who has been with you since the first one or two months. The new design my look cool and may meet many current web design standards, but it’s far less easy to use. Please ditch it!
Hi Chris, thanks for your feedback.
We’re still in testing mode and listening to feedback, but in one form or another the new design is here to stay.
I appreciate your thoughts on the amount of clicks to see content. We’re trying to balance the developing range of content so that as many posts/streetviews as possible get a chance to be seen, and we may not have that balance exactly right yet.
If you find that the new design doesn’t match your reading style, remember that you will always be able to read the full content of our posts in the format you describe by subscribing to our RSS feed:
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/feed/
This is the first stage of the new style Google Sightseeing, and we’re far from finished yet. Hopefully you’ll continue to read our posts as we continue to develop the site.