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September 22, 2011

New Interface for Google Instant Previews

Google tweaked the UI for Instant Previews and made the search interface a lot cleaner. There's a new large icon for Instant Previews, but it's only displayed when you mouse over a snippet. Click the new icon or only hover over the gray bar and you'll see a much bigger screenshot.


"Instant Previews have been around since last year, allowing you to click on the magnifying glass to the right of the result to see a visual overview of a page. Now these previews are no longer even a click away: if you move your mouse over a search result, arrows will appear. Hover over them to see a visual preview of that result," explains Google.

Clicking the snippet no longer triggers an Instant Preview in the new interface. Unfortunately, the keyboard shortcut has been disabled, so you can longer get a glimpse of the page using the right arrow.

Google now repeats the title of the page and the URL next to the screenshot, while the links to the cached page and to other similar pages are included in the new enlarged snippet. It's a bad news for those who frequently use the "cache" link, who now have to spend more time to find it.

The only action that's still displayed is the Google +1 button, but you need to log in to see it. Probably Google wanted to emphasize the button, which is now placed next to the URL.

Here's the old interface:

14 comments:

  1. The visited-link color looks the same as the unvisited-link color in Firefox and MSIE. I cannot tell them apart.

    Why are they so similar? Am I the only person with this problem?

    I cannot tell which links I have already visite.

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  2. How much ever easy this functionality being made but it is of not much use. If users are interested then they would prefer to click & go through the website.

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  3. Google tweaked the user interface for instant previews and the search interface is very clean. There is a great new instant icon previews.

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  4. they are trying to do too much now....overboard! also effects the adwords column....too much going on on the page now...dont like

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  5. I don't get the +1 button in the search result, annoying since I want to use it...

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  6. Honestly speaking.. This update is annoying sometimes when the connection is slow.

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  7. Putting the cache link in the preview pane was the worst decision they could possibly make. In the past the cache link was right under the search result and only a click away. Now you have to click the preview pane arrow navigate to the top to find the cache link and click it.

    Why the heck did Google make something simple so complicated?

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  8. The "CACHE LINK" is one of most usefull feature for searching for some word in a big text, the words are "highlighted" and make reserch a lot faster...

    This new UI BRINGS NOTHING in term of functionality for searching and further more hide almost the "CACHE LINK" :(

    Worst it's just a lost of Bandwidth, with all those "eyes-candy" that are useless for search...

    Will have to find or write a Greasmonkey Script to have a functional interface...

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  9. press TAB to regain keyboard navigation

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  10. for me some of the instant previews had make my search result load slower.. don't know what went wrong... sometime when I search something, there is this instant previews sometime it doesn't exist at all.. what's happen?

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  11. I like it, but only on fast connections. for people on slow connections it sucks, and also its easy to accidentally set it off.

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