Apparently if you’re running a late enough version of Chromium or Google Chrome I really don’t know how you enable this, but you might experience that Google’s home and search results page have been revamped to a new style. I’m running Chromium 5.0.335.0 5.0.356.2 (on the dev channel).
This is what these pages look like for me now:
Notice how the buttons and search text box is bigger, and the Google logotype now lacks shadows and the trademark symbol has been taken off of it. This page no longer features the fade-in effect, but shows everything on the page immediately. Though I have to say, in Chromium, the page reloads much, much faster anyway, than in Firefox 3.5.8 (current version in Ubuntu 9.10 as time of writing).
Update (2010-03-12): Fade-in effect is now activated in the new design as well.
Moving on to the results page now:
As you can see there is an entirely new menu on the left hand side. This menu is collapsed by default but I expanded it to show what it looks like. The options that were available before–such as sorting by date, and other attributes–can now be found under “More options…” also on the left hand side. The first menu on the left is very smooth-looking with its little favicon/thumbnail style of icons, and probably AJAX-powered, with its smooth expanding and collapsing. The menu below it however, unfortunately is not very smooth and seemingly even reloads the page when one expands/collapses it. It also resets the state of the menu above it.
Update (2010-03-23): The lower menu is now much more smooth and does not reload the page. It also features a few options (two at first: “All results” and “Page images” and more as you use other options), and the menu has now been titled “Recommended Tools”.
Update (2010-03-12): The little icons in the left-hand side menu are now colored as opposed to monochromatic/gray-ish.
Another thing to notice is the integration of the search button into the search text box, giving them both a more coherent look.
One thing I’m really missing from this new interface is the handy dictionary on the right side. If you search for a word that Google’s dictionary recognizes, there would otherwise be a link to its definition (see image below). I can’t see that anymore, but hope it resurfaces some day.
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