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Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly, And People Are Very Angry (zdnet.com) 294

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for ZDNet: Every major user interface (UI) redesign project is a hit and miss game, and Google's new Chrome UI appears to be a colossal miss. Designed with mobile devices in mind, the new Chrome user interface style was officially rolled out in September this year, with the release of Chrome version 69. Not all users liked the new UI, and this was clear from the beginning, with some users voicing their discontent online even back then. However, those users who didn't appreciate the new lighter-toned Chrome interface had the option to visit the chrome://flags page and modify a Chrome setting and continue using Chrome's older UI.

But with Chrome version 71, released earlier this month, Google has removed the Chrome flag that allowed users to use the old UI. As you might imagine, this change did not go well, at all. Chrome's new UI might have been developed with a mobile-first approach in mind, but the UI is problematic on laptops and desktops, where its lighter tone and rounded tabs make it extremely hard to distinguish tabs from one another, especially when users open multiple tabs. Since being able to distinguish and switch between tabs at a fast pace is an important detail in most of today's internet-based jobs, many users have been having trouble adapting to the new UI both at work and at home, especially if they're the kind of people who deal with tens of tabs at the same time.

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Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly, And People Are Very Angry

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  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @04:53AM (#57874372)

    Not specific to Chrome, but - why does "mobile first" generally seem to consistently result in "crappy everywhere"?

    • by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      Because "mobile first" seems to imply the current "everything white" UI trend.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        It is also designed for people to use in one hand with their thumbs, which doesn't translate well for power users that insist on using a full keyboard and mouse

      • by rainmouse ( 1784278 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @06:41AM (#57874514)
        Yeah it's painful, especially because all white is sooo great for power usage on mobiles. :(
        I don't know a single mobile website that's not vastly improved by forcing mobile browser to use desktop version.
        • by tsa ( 15680 )

          Indeed. And some websites stubbornly and consistently show only the mobile version on mobile devices, even on the iPad (looking at you, FaceBook). Very annoying.

      • I for one don't like the "everything white" UI trend. I'd much rather the UI elements were dark, so they didn't use power on my amoled display, and didn't blind me when I'm reading my phone in bed in the dark.

        Unfortunately Google Chrome has no option to change it (unless you're lucky enough to be on a website that sets the colours) and I have no idea where you'd go to directly tell Google your opinion on the matter.

      • by cheekyboy ( 598084 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @09:27AM (#57874808) Homepage Journal

        A msg to YOU CEOS and underling UI coders ;

        Your work is shit, you are shit, you are useless and all your work will be undone in a few years, ufck you.

        Just boot a 2010 Mac, and look at OSX 10.6 , oh wow, so pretty, so nice, so cute, fucking sweet ass bitch.

        All these modern shit, made by simpletons newbies is crap. Might have been ok in 1998 with crap hardware.

        • A msg to YOU CEOS and underling UI coders ;

          Your work is shit, you are shit, you are useless and all your work will be undone in a few years, ufck you.

          Just boot a 2010 Mac, and look at OSX 10.6 , oh wow, so pretty, so nice, so cute, fucking sweet ass bitch.

          All these modern shit, made by simpletons newbies is crap. Might have been ok in 1998 with crap hardware.

          Funny you should mention that. I was working on an iMac of that vintage with a hard drive problem. After fixing it I set it up for my wife to try out. She had never used a mac before, and is used to more "modern" UI's. She loved it! And her reaction read like your post. I'll have to show her the post when I get home.

        • I agree, 10.6, the last really good OSX UI, was beautiful and each bit of functionality was visible and stood out from the background and other buttons. Buttons stood out, icons stood out, everything was beveled. Then came Lion and everything went to grey on grey on grey shit.

          Or IOS 6. I have a 3GS that I use for playing tunes in the home gym occasionally and the UI is so scrumptiously beautiful functional. Everything is beveled and high-contrast so everything stands out. Black buttons with white text.

      • by jon3k ( 691256 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @10:27AM (#57874930)
        Agreed, it's using flat interfaces where you cannot spare a few pixels to create bevels to more clearly visually distinguish between elements. I realize that flat interface sure LOOK pretty, but the usability is objectively worse than the last generation of software applications with distinct, three dimensional controls and consistent set of toolkit widgets.
        • Agreed, it's using flat interfaces where you cannot spare a few pixels to create bevels to more clearly visually distinguish between elements. I realize that flat interface sure LOOK pretty, but the usability is objectively worse than the last generation of software applications with distinct, three dimensional controls and consistent set of toolkit widgets.

          I still design with Skeuomorphism. While not in fashion, we are pushing on figurative buttons and I've seen precious few buttons in the real world that are flat, shadowless monochromatic tiles.

          The trick is to make it fairly subtle. And if the customer demands trendiness, I can make the design flat and lifeless as they wish. I suspect that Skeuomorphism will make a comeback, as the flat tile concept is so damn limiting, lifeless, and boring.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            "The trick is to make it fairly subtle."

            There is no such thing as making Skeuomorphism "fairly subtle". You are using the term improperly.

            Skeuomorphism is the literal imitating or mimicking of materials, it is not the implementing of subtle visual cues that provide visual complexity. It is the fake woodgrain or yellow lined notepad, not the shading of a UI widget.

            Skeuomorphism is abhorrent and must die a painful death. Reducing "flatness" is not a "comeback" for Skeuomorphism.

            • "The trick is to make it fairly subtle."

              There is no such thing as making Skeuomorphism "fairly subtle". You are using the term improperly.

              Skeuomorphism is the literal imitating or mimicking of materials, it is not the implementing of subtle visual cues that provide visual complexity. It is the fake woodgrain or yellow lined notepad, not the shading of a UI widget.

              Skeuomorphism is abhorrent and must die a painful death. Reducing "flatness" is not a "comeback" for Skeuomorphism.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

              But thanks - it is good to get a professional designer to educate us.

            • There is no such thing as making Skeuomorphism "fairly subtle".

              Of course there is. You could, for example, make a photorealistic pushbutton or a very stylised cartoony one with a quite decent artist's rendering in between.

          • And if the customer demands trendiness, I can make the design flat and lifeless as they wish.

            The correct response is to tell the customer "No", and then hit them in the head with a brick over and over again until they come to their senses.

            • And if the customer demands trendiness, I can make the design flat and lifeless as they wish.

              The correct response is to tell the customer "No", and then hit them in the head with a brick over and over again until they come to their senses.

              oooohhhh, I like the way you think!!

          • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @04:37PM (#57876174) Journal

            I still design with Skeuomorphism. While not in fashion, we are pushing on figurative buttons and I've seen precious few buttons in the real world that are flat, shadowless monochromatic tiles. The trick is to make it fairly subtle

            The attack on Skeuomorphism was led by people without the skills to design that way. Flat is easier. That is my theory.

            • I still design with Skeuomorphism. While not in fashion, we are pushing on figurative buttons and I've seen precious few buttons in the real world that are flat, shadowless monochromatic tiles. The trick is to make it fairly subtle

              The attack on Skeuomorphism was led by people without the skills to design that way. Flat is easier. That is my theory.

              It certainly looks that way. Stick figure level design.

        • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @01:35PM (#57875452) Journal

          Flat interfaces SUCK.

          One of the things that made Windows 3 UI so likeable was that the interface actually looked like things people recognized, like buttons. People instantly got it- this thing that looked like a button could be clicked or pushed to do something.

          Now everything is a flat fucking rectangle, who knows if it's a label, a status indicator, a button, a decoration, or whatever the fuck else there is.

          I mean, why the fuck have a button that doesn't remotely resemble an actual, pushable button?

          And don't get me started on the hipster trend of "discoverable" interfaces. Fuck that shit, just give me a goddamn menu and let me get some shit done. I do NOT want to have to "discover" your fucking interface, that's the opposite of good design.

    • by mfearby ( 1653 )

      Possibly because the idea of a right-click (or other keyboard shortcuts) don't exist for mobile (apart from a long press in place of a right-click, I guess), so therefore a "mobile first" strategy often means making things less convenient for desktop experiences (where the developers wish to share as much code as possible and not fork the UI for the desktop).

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by bjwest ( 14070 )

        Possibly because the idea of a right-click (or other keyboard shortcuts) don't exist for mobile (apart from a long press in place of a right-click, I guess), so therefore a "mobile first" strategy often means making things less convenient for desktop experiences (where the developers wish to share as much code as possible and not fork the UI for the desktop).

        Perhaps if this is your way of thinking, you shouldn't be making cross-device applications. The UI's should be separate not only because the display is much larger, but also the input methods differ.

    • "mobile first" because the majority of users are mobile. I guess it simplifies stuff internally in the codebase.

      Still doesn't explain why it's needed, though. Like, on mobile you actually don't see the tabs at the top of the screen...

      • The majority of users running DESKTOP Chrome are mobile? Allah forbid that there would be two versions with two interfaces, one for mobile, one for not. This is just Scroogle Scroogling its sheep ... I mean customers.
      • oh google is such a small company, they cant afford one more person to do stuff.

        or to even have more testers...

        This isnt a project as big as Autocad , google are just lazy shits, and over paid.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Thing is Chrome isn't mobile first at all. It's very much desktop first, with the mobile version lacking features in both the UI and in the core app (no add-ons!)

      The UI has all the usual desktop trappings like hover animations (pointless on mobile). In fact the only major change was that they made the tabs a bit more rounded and use a bar to separate them instead of a kind of fake "stacked cards" effect. It's not at all difficult on the eye and hasn't affected usability at all.

    • by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @09:54AM (#57874860)
      My guess is that the new guys have no idea how to make a proper interface. And to complicate things they discard the current interfaces (products of decades of improvements) because they are "obsolete" for them, not "shiny and new".
    • Not specific to Chrome, but - why does "mobile first" generally seem to consistently result in "crappy everywhere"?

      Yes, I hate this move to mobile first as well! Not everyone uses their smartphone for every fucking thing in the book. I use my smartphone for GPS, calling, texting, music, and the occasional movie only. Any heavy productivity I do on my laptop or desktop. Mobile first attempts to make a square peg fit a round hole.

    • by jlowery ( 47102 )

      It's what happens when marketing is allowed to drive technological change. "Oh, look! There $$$ to be made if we can convince everyone to switch paradigms! Let's all write articles about how neat it is!"

    • Not specific to Chrome, but - why does "mobile first" generally seem to consistently result in "crappy everywhere"?

      Mobile first literally means f*** desktop users.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Too many people that think an UI needs to be an "experience". Give it a few years and the morons driving these "innovations" may realize nobody cares.

    • by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      One thing that I've always found very annoying about Chrome's UI is that there are always close buttons on every tab, until you have like 100 tabs open. On desktop, you can use middle-click to close tabs... and I do. There's a long Google Groups thread somewhere with hundreds of users saying "please provide an option to remove close buttons on tabs" and Google did their usual arrogant thing of saying "no, it makes the product better [somehow]". I wouldn't say I accidentally close tabs all the time but I

  • Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dohzer ( 867770 )

    I haven't noticed anything. Just opened "Help -> About" and I have "Version 71.0.3578.98 (Official Build) (64-bit)". My phone is v71 too. Is this some Apple thing?

    • by jblues ( 1703158 )
      Just did the same. Couldn't see what the problem was and checked the version. (On a Mac).
  • by mfearby ( 1653 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @05:06AM (#57874402) Homepage

    "its lighter tone and rounded tabs make it extremely hard to distinguish tabs from one another, especially when users open multiple tabs."

    My eye sight is garbage and I'm normally the first person to complain about something being bad, but I've had no problems with Chrome 71. In fact, I didn't even know that this latest version was as described, although now that I look more closely, I can see that I don't get to see the rounded shapes of the inactive tabs until I hover over them.

    I can see the favicon for each tab clearly, I can see each tab's close button, and I can see a clear divider between each tab. I can also clearly see which is the active tab.

    Move along, nothing to see here, except a beat up.

    • by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @06:13AM (#57874490)

      This is only the latest in a general trend of Google of making their UI -- desktop, mobile and web -- progressively worse.
      This being a distinct change, top, front and centre, and not something snuck in sideways in a seldom-used dialogue box, it is something that people notice immediately.

      People have been upset about several more minor changes for a longer time, but for some, this was the last straw.
      Reduced contrast, hover-indicators that take long to appear, hamburger menus and close-buttons that you don't see until you hover over them, wasted whitespace ...
      Those are all crimes against good design, and part of Google's "Material Design" or "Polymer" or whatever they decide to call it these days.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What the hell are you on about?

        In the default install of Chrome on Windows the hamburger menu is visible always. The tab close buttons are visible always. There is no wasted whitespace at all. Are you sure you are not confusing it with Firefox, which does in fact hide some of the UI and recently added random whitespace around the URL bar?

        Oh, and the hover animations are instant for me, and the pop-up tool-tips take around 500ms to appear (estimate), faster than the default on Windows.

    • by Calydor ( 739835 )

      My inactive tabs still have rounded corners and are visibly grey instead of white for the active tab. I'm definitely not one to just accept change for the sake of change, but I honestly can't see that anything has changed since last week or last month.

    • Yeah I'm not seeing the problem here apart from "people always react against change". The old tab design was really specific hit areas and I was constantly changing tabs rather than closing them because the crosses were too small. Feels like a positive change to me.

    • In chrome 70 linux (maybe they changed it?) the new design makes inactive tabs light grey text which is fine, but I have a bookmarks bar and the whole thing is light grey text - this is an eyesore. The round stuff isn't too bad but they added a doughnut icon to the right in the url bar - oh I look real close and it's a tiny head within a circle and the tooltip says 'you'. THIS LOOKS LIKE A DOUGHNUT! I bet it looked a lot more distinguishable in the square button form. Most of the round buttons on the url ba
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      What they should do is make the browser skinnable. Not enough people would actually bother to install a different theme to make any difference in Google marketing's nefarious plans for world domination through Material Design, but it would shut people up.

      <oldFartAnecdote>If like me went to college back in the 70s, college dining halls were pretty much like larger versions of high school cafeterias: dingy dungeons that dished out slop. If you go to one now, the dining hall looks more like a shopping

  • by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @05:10AM (#57874410) Homepage

    I use Chrome both in work and at home. I would end up having a lot of tabs open in work, especially. I've never seen any if the issues being described here. Nor heard anyone in work complain. So I really don't get this...

    Is this maybe just one person trying to find a reason to rant because they just don't like change, no matter how small, and are blowing stuff out of proportion?

    • I think modern Chrome looks much better on Windows 7. The tabs are quite distinguishable. But on most other systems, especially on Windows 10 (with grayish window frames), it leaves much to be desired.
    • by dissy ( 172727 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @07:04AM (#57874552)

      I use Chrome both in work and at home. I would end up having a lot of tabs open in work, especially. I've never seen any if the issues being described here. Nor heard anyone in work complain. So I really don't get this...

      So is it if anyone has an opinion not matching your own, it's invalid?
      Otherwise I don't get your post either.

      Is this maybe just one person trying to find a reason to rant because they just don't like change, no matter how small, and are blowing stuff out of proportion?

      I know five people personally, one of which is me. So the answer to that is no.

      With aging eyesight and 40 years worth of muscle memory knowing the title bar is for moving windows, the latest UI change completely breaks flow and makes a mess of the tabs nearly defeating the entire point of them.

      There is 4 pixels worth of blue at the very top of the title bar that functions to move the browser window. Anywhere below that in the exact same colored blue is a tab.
      So the normal process of clicking in the title bar and dragging the window where you need it turns into chrome thinking I am clicking on a tab and dragging just it where I wanted the entire browser to be.
      Sometimes this results in that tab detaching and becoming its own window, other times it just results in reordering the tabs.

      If that is going to be the new behavior, it would be far faster and efficient to go back to individual windows and pretend the one tab in each window doesn't exist.
      At least that way the same end result will already be there and expected, and at least it won't change the order of the windows in the task bar, or require retraining how the title bar works for a single app and the decades old behavior in all others.

      • So is it if anyone has an opinion not matching your own, it's invalid?

        Well yes, in an opinion piece if someone's doesn't match yours it becomes invalid for you. However reading through the comments here and adding my own personal opinion to it, it would appear the author is looking for things to whine about given most of the posts here are completely neutral on the topic.

        So yes it's invalid.

        There is 4 pixels worth of blue at the very top of the title bar that functions to move the browser window.

        And given that was not a change introduced in the recent UI change your post is invalid too.

    • by labnet ( 457441 )

      If you have lots of tabs open, use Firefox and treestyle tabs. Thank me later!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ...everyone told us to use the system theme when drawing UI widgets and such. What changed?

    • That went the way of "Things you can click should look different to things you can't" and "No matter how much the arty farty ui guys have #@%&ed things up to make it look 'pretty', you can always right click to get things done".

  • This sounds like maybe a Mac only issue? I've always noticed Mac colors look washed out and low contrast at the high intensity end. Something about the gamma difference, like it's higher than on Windows/Linux.

  • Do you remember when "web browser chrome" used to refer to different visual themes for user interface the that you could write yourself and choose between in the Mozilla web browser?
    There were quite a few of them to choose between on a section on Mozillazine called The ChromeZone [mozillazine.org]. The barrier to entry was quite low, all themes as images and as text files written in the XML-based language XUL [mozilla.org]. I had contributed a web browser UI theme to The Chrome Zone myself.

    But the full-fledged Mozilla browser was known to

  • ... email when they can't get messaging right on a platform (Android), they wholly own.

  • UI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @06:34AM (#57874504) Homepage

    For some reasons modern designers are hell bent on making UI as opaque as possible and here at slashdot it's been already discussed multiple times [slashdot.org].

    I've found the only justification to this madness: designers have long become redundant but they want to be paid that's why we have new trends all the time and new design decisions which make the user completely lost.

    For me, the best design was implemented in Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/7 OS'es without ribbon. The worst came in the form of Windows 8/MS Office 2007 and it's been all downhill since then. Too bad corporations just don't want to admit that and they still insist that there's one UI which fits them all which cannot be further from the truth as large displays with mouse and keyboard are a completely different mode of operation than touch devices with comparatively small screens.

  • The world is going to hell, there's a madman in the white house, global warming is out of control, the stock markets are crashing, but dammit, don't fuck with my UI!

    I think this article may be a case of exaggeration, but if not, there's certainly more important things to be angry about...

  • by shatteredsilicon ( 755134 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @07:45AM (#57874610)

    The thing that this particular teletubby interface update broke is information density. After the update, the new skin in both gmail and calendar quite simply puts less on a screen. On the desktop it is annoying. On the mobile devices with limited screen real estate, it is downright devastating for usage and productivity.

    It's as if since the turn of the century, user interfaces have been continuously redesigned to be more and more friendly toward children under 2 - with rounded corners and buttons too big to accidentally swallow. It's as if Fischer Price have been contracted to do user interface designs ever since.

  • As long as the ads are tracking and users can see the ads its all ok.
    GUI design: the user space around the ads.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Anyone who willingly uses Google products is asking for either disappointment or betrayal.

    How many times does Google have to arbitrarily kill off "products" before you cretins GET IT ?

    Be quick now, and mod this post down because it threatens your sad little self image as a willing user of shit ( Google ) products.

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday December 29, 2018 @10:07AM (#57874888) Homepage Journal

    Chrome's UI has stunk on ice since day one. Now they're angry?

    I do hate the trend of mobile apps with crap UI, though. For example, Firefox for mobile would benefit from a preferences dialog that would let me disable pocket, and tell the browser to actually load the URL I called it with instead of showing me quick links (including pocket.) I had never even heard of Pocket before Firefox integrated it over the wishes of the users, who proclaimed that we did not want it. Now I think it's the antichrist, and I hope their HQ falls over and bursts into flames.

    We're going to need a new Mozilla foundation, without blackjack and hookers. Because they are apparently spending all their time partying, and none listening to users. We're gonna need a new Phoenix browser.

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @10:15AM (#57874904)
    With Firefox killing their real add ons and Edge becoming a Chrome clone you are effectively limited to the Choices of the Chrome developers of what is good for browsing the web. You could have stopped this, but you didn't. The last resistance is in the Firefox forks but they will be crushed eventually as Chrome exerts its monopoly powers.
  • Google creates drive. Picture pages move to it. Ugly white on gray, hard to read.

    Eat my shorts, Google.

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @10:55AM (#57874994)

    Use firefox, for the next few weeks the interface will be very similar to the old chrome's interface. But be warned that, in two releases, they will copy the new chrome's interface, and then you will be back to square one...

  • by e**(i pi)-1 ( 462311 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @11:26AM (#57875084) Homepage Journal
    maybe that UI designers come from the gaming industry. They design puzzles. Once one get used to things, hide the toolbar, hide the scrolling bars, hide and seek is the new trend. That is what games are for: find the treasure! Find the current URL, fine the place to print, jackpot. Even when reading stories, the pictures have to appear dynamically, nonlinear story telling makes even reading a text feel like running through a maze. Maybe one has to swipe left, maybe down, maybe click. Just add a few adds, which attack from random sides and we are in a full blown computer game. Sometimes, one really misses the simplicity of the 90ies.
  • I switched to Firefox last year around October after getting sick and tired of being the product to sell to Google. Now, everything I am on is open source and mostly Google-free. I only use Google for map because it's a lot better than the free/open source one.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @11:33AM (#57875112)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Nobody could have seen that coming!

    Seriously this is what I call the cycle of /r/chrome because I see it all the time on there.

    1. Chrome team introduces a new feature or a change, hides it behind a flag so they can privately test it or do a/b testing or whatever.
    2. Nobody notices or cares.
    3. Chrome team feals the feature/change is stable and turns it on for everyone.
    4. Vocal minority hates it.
    5. Someone finds the flag and realizes it can be used to revert the change, ignoring the big warning at the top of the page that f
  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday December 29, 2018 @01:26PM (#57875434) Journal

    "Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly, And People Are Very Angry"

    Jesus, please stop with the HuffPost and DailyMail style headlines. FFS, this isn't Romper Room or The Enquirer.

    Alternative headlines:

    Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly and It Broke The Internet
    Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly and Cardi B Clapped Back at Them
    Google Chrome's New UI is Ugly and Demi Lovato Showed Off Her Toned Abs
    Google Chrome's New UI so Ugly that the Queen's Protocol Made Her Do WHAT?
    What Does Kanye Think About The New Chrome Interface?

  • I didn't even notice much of a change until I came across this article.

    I think people are whining to whine, and not much more. It's barely much of a change.

  • Is there anything that Chrome does better than Brave?

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