The Google Fade — Stop Complaining

Google Fade

I don’t understand people sometimes.

Google recently unveiled a new minor design change to its famously conservative and minimalist homepage. In fact, it is so minor, many people fail to catch it the first time. Go to www.google.com to see what I’m talking about.

Did you blink? The logo and search bar appear on the page load, but the menus and links fade in once the mouse moves.

Okay, fine. Kinda gimmicky, but I applaud any excuse to flex some HTML5 (check out the source!). But god all mighty are some people pissed.

The forums over at the Google Web Search Forum are crawling with pitch-fork armies.

Like this monster. With over 600 replies, this thread is full of “annoyed” peeps, most of whom are demanding an option to disable the fade. And then there’s this poor fellow, who reformatted his computer TWICE, thinking he had a virus.

Sprocket Ad

Here’s how the fade works. The menu and links are created when the page is loaded, but their opacity is adjusted to “hide” them from the viewer. When the user moves his/her mouse, a client-side script is executed and the opacity is adjusted for exactly 602 milliseconds. That’s correct. 602 milliseconds!

Google Fade Script

What the hell is wrong with people?! I’m guessing most of these annoyed individuals are sitting at laptops with a touch pad, waiting for the links to appear. But come on.
Users are “going to Bing”, conspiring to “boycott Chrome” and signing “official” petitions to get back their 602 milliseconds.

Here. You want something to complain about? Here’s a 5 minute Google fade. Shut up and get back to complaining about the damn logos.