I don't like having Google as a home page and I don't it when other people have Google as their home page, and this is equally true of iGoogle.
I guess my reason may be kind of petty, but to me it's a huge niggle. I don't like the way it takes a little while to load, and then once it's loaded, it grabs keyboard focus. If you are typing something, for example, into your browser's address bar or search bar, the Google page hijacks what you're doing and you end up typing the tail half of whichever word you're on into the Google home page, and then you have to go back to the address bar or search bar, figure out how much of what you typed actually made it into there, and resume from where you left off.
My browser already has a search bar, I don't need a big Google search box loaded when I open a new tab.
Last time I tried iGoogle, I found that the interface for adding a new feed was far too restricted. I couldn't figure out a way to just paste in the address of a particular feed I wanted to add - instead, it wanted me to browse through their categories and select one of their pre-defined feeds. I see that this has now changed. Not only can you add any feed you like just by pasting the address into a box, but you can now have Google Reader show up, so I don't even need to duplicate between them.
I belong to the subset of people who like their homepage to load instantly, rather than requiring any contact with the world wide web at all. At work, my homepage is just a blank screen - that doesn't take any time at all to load. At home, I have a homepage I created myself which contains a whole bunch of links I often use. It also loads instantly, because it is a local file on my computer. And it doesn't steal text focus from whatever other text box I may want to start typing in.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Google Book Search
Google has a habit of producing web applications that are proofs-of-concept. They stick the word 'Beta' into the logo, and produce a very impressive application that does something few people thought could be done in such a way, even though the concept has not yet been proven and, usually, they haven't come up with a way to make money from it. I think it's fairly impressive - while to Google these are only side-projects, they are still serious projects which have had serious resources put into them.
You can read what I wrote on this page about Google Book Search. It was originally called Google Print Library Project, and it was a joint project by Google and some large academic and public libraries to scan 15 million books within a decade (I think that figure comes from Wikipedia, which came from a press release).
A number of things are impressive about it. The sheer number of books which are stored is the least of it: Google is no stranger to storing and indexing staggeringly large amount of information.
The interface is quite original. Not satisfied with relying on the Adobe Reader Plug-in, Google instead have created their own, web-based, reader interface which doesn't need PDF at all! It's a very nice change from other e-books which load up as PDFs, or worse, in which every separate page loads as a separate PDF! Google averts such nightmares with its own web-based reader, which in a lot of ways is actually faster and easier to use. Faster, because they are using AJAX techniques (as much as I hate that term) to place content on the page without reloading the entire page, so I can continuously scroll through and Google will load each page just as I am about to reach it (unless I run into some copyright-justified limit of course). Easier to use because, well, the problems of reading PDFs on the web should be well known. Reading PDFs on the web is just a nasty experience overall, and one I prefer to avoid.
Apart from the few times I have wanted to find some technical information and a Google search has landed me half way into a book on Google Book Search, I haven't really used it much. As technically impressive as it is, I don't yet prefer to read for enjoyment while I am browsing the web unless it is pretty short and low-brow (feeds for example), and if I need to look up something technical I usually find it in a more web-palatable form than in a book. But I have to admit it has come in useful to me at least once.
You can read what I wrote on this page about Google Book Search. It was originally called Google Print Library Project, and it was a joint project by Google and some large academic and public libraries to scan 15 million books within a decade (I think that figure comes from Wikipedia, which came from a press release).
A number of things are impressive about it. The sheer number of books which are stored is the least of it: Google is no stranger to storing and indexing staggeringly large amount of information.
The interface is quite original. Not satisfied with relying on the Adobe Reader Plug-in, Google instead have created their own, web-based, reader interface which doesn't need PDF at all! It's a very nice change from other e-books which load up as PDFs, or worse, in which every separate page loads as a separate PDF! Google averts such nightmares with its own web-based reader, which in a lot of ways is actually faster and easier to use. Faster, because they are using AJAX techniques (as much as I hate that term) to place content on the page without reloading the entire page, so I can continuously scroll through and Google will load each page just as I am about to reach it (unless I run into some copyright-justified limit of course). Easier to use because, well, the problems of reading PDFs on the web should be well known. Reading PDFs on the web is just a nasty experience overall, and one I prefer to avoid.
Apart from the few times I have wanted to find some technical information and a Google search has landed me half way into a book on Google Book Search, I haven't really used it much. As technically impressive as it is, I don't yet prefer to read for enjoyment while I am browsing the web unless it is pretty short and low-brow (feeds for example), and if I need to look up something technical I usually find it in a more web-palatable form than in a book. But I have to admit it has come in useful to me at least once.
Google Docs
Having worked on web applications for a while I find the concept of an entire office suite running as a web application really amazing. It wasn't too long ago that this would have been entirely a pipe dream.
Google has been pushing the envelope quite a while - I remember when GMail was launched and we all marvelled at their courage, launching a web application for the masses, but one which broke backwards compatibility with any web browser more than a couple of years old. It made heavy use of a technique which has come to be known as AJAX, whereby scripts on the web page itself can send or receive information to or from the server and update parts of the page, negating the need for an entire new page request to be made and a new page loaded. This allows for more responsive, richer web applications which still store their data on a remote server and still require no applications to be installed on the user's machine, apart from the browser alone.
In its current state I see Google Docs as a proof of concept, rather than a serious attempt to take Microsoft's territory. Previously, not many would have imagined that an entire office suite could be run as a web application, and yet still be easy enough to use, flexible, quick enough to respond, and interoperable with documents from other office suites. Still, by proving it to be possible it at least hints that web applications may start to threaten traditional desktop applications.
One problem with web applications, at least historically, is the latency of the web. It takes time for anything you submit on a web page to be transmitted to the server, and for the server to respond with a new page containing what you wanted. Loading a new page is the traditional way to navigate around a web application. However, applications like GMail and Google Docs overcome this by loading virtually the entire application in a single web page containing scripts, so that most navigation within the application does not require information to be submitted back to the server or waiting for a response, because it is running locally.
A great benefit of web applications is that they require no installation of software on the local machine - a person with a web browser can visit the web application and begin using it immediately. This is in contrast to, for example, a desktop office suite which requires a somewhat complicated installation process, if it is not pre-installed on the computer.
There are sometimes compatibility issues with older or less-popular browsers, though most web applications support a range of recently released browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Konqueror/Safari, Opera and their derivatives) supporting various platforms. One drawback is that many modern web applications are incompatible with the simple browsers found on phones or PDAs. Google produce 'mobile' versions of some of these applications, such as Gmail and Google Reader, which can be used on these devices. But they don't support the features of the full application, and are not nearly as quick or responsive, requiring page reloads to navigate around them.
I don't use Google Docs regularly, though I use Gmail and Google Reader from time to time, both which are applications that have only recently become attractive alternatives to desktop applications - in this case, email clients and feed readers.
Google has been pushing the envelope quite a while - I remember when GMail was launched and we all marvelled at their courage, launching a web application for the masses, but one which broke backwards compatibility with any web browser more than a couple of years old. It made heavy use of a technique which has come to be known as AJAX, whereby scripts on the web page itself can send or receive information to or from the server and update parts of the page, negating the need for an entire new page request to be made and a new page loaded. This allows for more responsive, richer web applications which still store their data on a remote server and still require no applications to be installed on the user's machine, apart from the browser alone.
In its current state I see Google Docs as a proof of concept, rather than a serious attempt to take Microsoft's territory. Previously, not many would have imagined that an entire office suite could be run as a web application, and yet still be easy enough to use, flexible, quick enough to respond, and interoperable with documents from other office suites. Still, by proving it to be possible it at least hints that web applications may start to threaten traditional desktop applications.
One problem with web applications, at least historically, is the latency of the web. It takes time for anything you submit on a web page to be transmitted to the server, and for the server to respond with a new page containing what you wanted. Loading a new page is the traditional way to navigate around a web application. However, applications like GMail and Google Docs overcome this by loading virtually the entire application in a single web page containing scripts, so that most navigation within the application does not require information to be submitted back to the server or waiting for a response, because it is running locally.
A great benefit of web applications is that they require no installation of software on the local machine - a person with a web browser can visit the web application and begin using it immediately. This is in contrast to, for example, a desktop office suite which requires a somewhat complicated installation process, if it is not pre-installed on the computer.
There are sometimes compatibility issues with older or less-popular browsers, though most web applications support a range of recently released browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Konqueror/Safari, Opera and their derivatives) supporting various platforms. One drawback is that many modern web applications are incompatible with the simple browsers found on phones or PDAs. Google produce 'mobile' versions of some of these applications, such as Gmail and Google Reader, which can be used on these devices. But they don't support the features of the full application, and are not nearly as quick or responsive, requiring page reloads to navigate around them.
I don't use Google Docs regularly, though I use Gmail and Google Reader from time to time, both which are applications that have only recently become attractive alternatives to desktop applications - in this case, email clients and feed readers.
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