Comments on: Fading navigation on the Google homepage

By: User testing and thirteen ways of selling a book - paul olyslager

User testing and thirteen ways of selling a book - paul olyslager — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:46:13 +0000

[...] that doesn’t mean you should stop testing once the website goes online. I wrote an article (Fading navigation on the Google homepage) about this before, using the Google homepage as an example. Google is constantly testing the [...]

By: Google versteckt sich | NIDAG Blog

Google versteckt sich | NIDAG Blog — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:57:47 +0000

[...] per Tastatur starten die versteckten Navigationselemente nicht zu sehen bekommen. Paul Olyslager bewertet in seinem Blog das Für und Wider dieser Technik und ich stimme ihm in den meisten Punkten zu. Es lohnt sich [...]

By: favSHARE

favSHARE — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:41:15 +0000

This article has been shared on favSHARE.net. Go and vote it!

By: Fading navigation on the Google homepage | favSHARE.net

Fading navigation on the Google homepage | favSHARE.net — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:41:09 +0000

[...] Read the original article [...]

By: Paul Olyslager

Paul Olyslager — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:29:52 +0000

@Nitzan: Thanks for the comment Nitzan. If you read the Google Blog you'll find that this wasn't Google's intention. But you do bring up a interesting point though, the fade-in could have the opposite effect of what they wanted to achieve. The only way to find out is by conducting eye-tracking studies. My guess would be that the fade-in is rather easy on the eye (in comparison with blinking) and therefore the attention is reduced to a minimum. I would love to see some results of this.

By: Nitzan

Nitzan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:42:57 +0000

Here’s another view of this change.
Since animation (fading, blinking, whatever) tends to grab the user’s attention, maybe Google just wanted to make people more aware of the other options (???)

Any thoughts?

By: DubCat

DubCat — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:44:46 +0000

@Melroy Antoine van den Berg: I also heartily dislike it. I frequenty use search for pictures or maps, and this constant fading is terribly irritating.

By: Melroy van den Berg

Melroy van den Berg — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 14:21:20 +0000

@Paul Olyslager: Thanks for your reply, its right I post it also on the other blog, so the disscusion would be bigger. Haha

By: Dallas Cowboys vs. New Orleans Saints – NFL Week 15 Free Pick … | Dallas Cowboys NFL Announcer

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:21:27 +0000

[...] Fading navigation on the Google homepage | paul olyslager [...]

By: Paul Olyslager

Paul Olyslager — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:31:42 +0000

@Ryan: Maybe the wording "cluttered" was a bit heavy indeed but I think you can agree that the pre-fading fase looks cleaner. The first impression of a website is formed within 50 milliseconds on opening a page and I think Google is trying to use these few milliseconds to highlight what Google search is all about. For me this is not about Google favoring flash over substance, this is Google favoring substance by using flash. I would love to see some eye-tracking studies of the changes, but for now I could only find them for the SERP's.