Search and Width

2 May 2006

Two things.

Firstly, Google has officially jumped the shark. It’s quite a sad fall – we all used to really like Google; they were different; they were nice.

But now…

The prompt is of course Google’s bitter whining about the default search box in Internet Explorer being set to MSN Search. They’re claiming that users should have a choice on first startup of IE to allow them to change it. It’s all about “user choice” of course, not that millions of people will start using MSN Search because of it.

I think it’s quite incredible that Google have the nerve to even suggest this – firstly the user experience would be awfull but I don’t quite understand why they think that anyone would take their side on this. Obviously, most people are more enamoured with Google then Microsoft, but I think it’s only fair that Microsoft use their own search engine in their browser.

Of course, we don’t hear Google complaining about the lack of “user choice” in Firefox and Safari, which both default to Google in their search field…

Secondly, I’m quite disappointed with this years Reboot. Some of the designs are really quite lovely – Jeff Crofts in particular – but there seems to be an abundance of sites that are both fixed width and too wide to fit on 800×600.

I thought we’d all got past this?

It’s very simple folks; just make it stretchy. It’s not that hard*.

* Yes, a stretchy de-online will be coming soon(ish).

From: Articles

2 May 2006