Google recently revamped the way that their news website is organized. As an admitted news junkie, this is something I've had to deal with, as I go there several times a day to see "what's happening." And let me be very clear.
I hate the new google news format. What's funny is that I found I'm not alone in this feeling, because I went to google and typed into the search engine "i hate the new…" and the little suggestions popped up, and right at the top was "i hate the new google news." So other people went and did the same thing I did.
Actually, some things about the new design are good ideas. One thing that I really like is the way it grabs my IP address and offers a section with "local" news – finding interesting news about southwest Korea in English is challenging, and that really helps.
But overall, the new design is a problem, and it boils down to one issue: real estate. By this, I don't mean anything about buying and selling land; I'm referring to how it uses screen space. At home, I mostly use my little netbook computer to surf online, and the screen is small. As a consequence, because the center column of entries is now "fleshed out" with more info about each story, only 1 and 1/2 story fits "above the fold" on my screen – I have to scroll to see more stories. And the convenient little index thing on the left now is two or even three screens long, whereas before it fit easily "above the fold." Using the nasty track-pad for scrolling on my netbook isn't fun – there's no handy scrolling wheel like on most newer mice.
And as always when programmers make changes, the keyboard shortcuts receive short shrift, are inconsistent from version to version (both of browsers and/or of specific websites, that also like to override default browser behavior, which itself is brutally annoying, by the way) and zero documentation support.
The expansions in real estate usage are even noticeable on the large screens of the computers at work.
Relatedly, I don't like the "fast flip" in the right hand column, either. Not that it's a bad idea, but it takes up way too much space relative to the possible benefit offered – it's still too small to read the content shown "right there" and so, like most thumbnailing features, I'd be inclined to turn it off, if I could. I've never found thumbnails to be particularly useful as a feature in any computer desktop context, as the images are too small to see directly and therefore serve no purpose except as a memory prompt for the semi-literate – but why would someone only semi-literate want to surf the google news site? I'd be perfectly happy to have no images at all, to be honest.
I would guess that there are ways to get back to more closely approximating the old format, using the news customization features – but because I don't allow google to store cookies or do site customization on my computer or in association with my login ID, that's ruled out. I don't allow the google customization not just due to privacy concerns, but also because it seems to make which of the news articles that get prioritized kind of strange – they become incomprehensibly driven by recent searches (which given my line of work and wide ranging imagination, aren't exactly current-events-driven) – these "recent search" driven news items are exactly what I don't want when surfing for general recent world news.
