Recently I’ve had a late-night routine where I grab the Android tab, check email, check twitter, then catch up on Google+. I’ve found a few interesting people there to follow and enjoyed the conversations and (sometimes) erudite comments. Then I made a mistake — I updated to the latest Google+ app.
It’s unreadable. The mixture of white text on pale backgrounds, and the cacophony of jumbled bits of cropped photos in garish colours gives me a headache. I can’t find any way to get rid of the images, or any way to turn back the UI to the old one (not perfect, but at least I could scan for interesting articles). I’m told lots of people love the UI; I guess they must have some artistic sensibility that I lack. Or better eyesight, able to scan past the distractions to get to the text. Or maybe they are more interested in the photos than the text anyway, so for them it was the text that was the distraction.
Whatever the cause, I don’t read Google+ any more. Which is a pity, because I enjoyed that late-night routine, found some interesting articles, learned some new things.
Maybe one day Google will learn to allow people more choice in the Google+ UI? It shouldn’t be that hard; I can well imagine having different apps that can all access the same underlying data, and present it in different ways to the reader. And if they’re trying to encourage lots of people to use G+, it seems odd to me to force one UI on us all.
Why not forget the app and use the Web browser view?
I could, but there are a couple of issues with that. For a start, I usually don’t want to be signed in with a Google account on the browser for privacy and tracking reasons. When I am signed in, it’s often with my other Google account, not the G+ account, so I’d need to sign out as one user, then sign in again as the other user, then sign out when I’d finished browsing G+. I’ll do that if I know there’s something interesting there to read, but not for random browsing late at night.
That’s why I have three different browsers installed on my Android tablet running ICS: the built-in “Browser”, the Chrome for Android beta, and the Dolphin HD browser.
“Browser” is not usually logged in. Chrome displays Google+ quite well. Dolphin HD can tell websites that it is a desktop browser.
It is unfortunate that such machinations are required, though.