Material design feels like it was designed entirely to look good with zero regard for usability. It uses way too much padding for everything and wasted tons of screen real estate.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the most extensively usability tested design systems ever. Whether or not that supersedes the hubris of Google designers is another story. Personally I don't have an issue using material design elements as a user.
My main complaint is actually with mobile. Phones already have limited screen space. I don't need Google's trash padding taking 20% or more of that away from me.
In terms of UI, Android 11 was the last good Android. Anything with Material looks awful. In fact, I will likely switch to Linux or Sailfish OS if possible when I have to replace my Android 11 phone.
I think based on timing your objection is with Material You / Material Design 3 specifically, which replaced Material Design 2 starting in Android 12. Android 11 was already using Material Design (2) (the card theme) which replaced the previous theme, Holo in Android 5. Holo was the cyberpunk-y black with blue highlights interface, though honestly Kitkat (4.4) had already started that trend that led to Material, removing colors from Holo.
I'm also not a fan of Material You to be honest, the "colors from your background" gimmick just results in all the colours being muddy boring desaturated ones, and the general low contrast + rounded look just doesn't work for me.
The use of hamburger menus on desktop is one of my pet peeves. I get that it's simpler to manage across the vast number of properties that an organisation like Google has, but it's a really suboptimal use of space. Ditto the fact that the "new document" icon in Google Workspace is all the way at the bottom right, even on a huge monitor.
> Ditto the fact that the "new document" icon in Google Workspace is all the way at the bottom right, even on a huge monitor.
Even on mobile it's easy to miss! Google makes it a white button with a thin gray shadow, usually against white rows separated by thin gray lines.
If you squint, it literally becomes invisible because its visible weight is identical to its surroundings.
IIRC it used to be the solid accent color with white text, so you couldn't miss it. But now it's almost invisible unless you know where to look for it. It really is baffling.
Windows XP was good, even if it was very…playful. Windows 7 was usable even with the eyecandy. i feel that Win95 UI was a bit too drab for personal computing.
Flat design has been the attempt to try to create a unified design language across desktop and mobile, since most people are constantly switching between the two and using the same apps across both.
As passwords are used less and less with alternatives like Passkeys, SSO, or even just policies defined by the maintainer of an account, split login flows like this are going to become more and more common.
I know it’s a slight regression for password managers, it annoyed me at first, but I have made my peace with it as I understand the other security benefits. I’d recommend sorting your password manager out, I use 1Password and don’t have any problems. I think it’s something password managers will need to get better at quickly.
Which password manager do you use? I use 1Password and the split username / password Google logins work fine for me, and from another sibling comment it sounds like Bitwarden does too.
AFAICT the better ones (including Google's existing flow) have the password input present in the document, but hidden, and unhide when they want to ask for it. That way a manager looking at the DOM can pre-fill (or be ready to fill) the password.
Splitting across two documents seems monstrous and probably insecure?
There's no point in blaming the pages -- blame lies with the password manager or browser/OS.
E.g. on iOS, Safari fills in your username just fine even when there's no password field. Whereas on iOS, third-party browsers (e.g. Chrome) won't. According to 1Password, it's a known bug that is up to Apple to support/fix in WebView. (And the fact that it works in Safari but not WebView seems a little anticompetitive...)
It makes sense that they're making a huge amount of noise about this, because "this doesn't look like the right login page" is otherwise an extremely valid reaction that should be encouraged.
and yet, they announce a change to the login screen from a domain of workspaceupdates.googleblog.com
If I was unaware of the change, and somebody sent me a link, and I wanted more information about the change, and got sent a link to workspaceupdates.googleblog.com (without already knowing of it) I would think its a sophisticated phishing attempt. A corporation like google should really be pushing human trust through exclusive use of .google or .google.com
This is just their changelog page essentially, where every Workspace update is documented, no matter how large or small. The intended audience is Workspace admins.
On the other hand, why this trivial change is being upvoted here on HN as interesting news is totally baffling to me.
Apparently not, but it is excellent news for those of us that read that headline and thought “what fresh new hell did some UX designer trying to pad their resumé and really leave their mark on the world for the next couple of years cook up?”
So it’s at least a karmically neutral change. You didn’t win anything and I didn’t lose anything.
It's wild to me that they don't implement dark mode and `prefers-color-scheme` for their sign in page, and I'm assuming this will still be the case. Gotta love visiting youtube.com which does respect this preference, then get blasted with light once you click Sign In.
Yeah, I recently got a new computer and suddenly found the web unusable. I'd actually forgotten that I'd installed that extension, I just thought almost every website supported dark mode now.
For a page that has a billion users and is a prime spoofing target, they probably have real data showing that any visual adaptation results in substantial user confusion.
If any visual adaptation results in substantial user confusion, then why roll out this update which they say is "strictly a change in visual appearance"? If they're going to cause confusion, at least incorporate some additional functionality at the same time.
When a service is being redesigned, I hope improvements to the functionality is what's leading those changes. Causing confusion without any benefits beyond a "more modern look" isn't the best reasoning for a redesign.
Dark mode is still pretty hit or miss across the web and across apps, and I'm not sure I ever see that changing.
That was my fear when Apple rolled it out at the OS level -- that it would only ever be half useful because it just wouldn't become universally adopted.
Contrast that with, for example, 2x/3x retina resolution across apps and the web which is now totally standard. I almost never see icons or UX elements with blocky pixels anymore, except on extremely old forum software.
By this point I almost wish Apple would forcibly smart-invert everything that looks like light mode into dark mode at the OS level. Like trying to read Google News at night is a nightmare because half the articles are dark but half are light.
Can I maybe switch accounts from the first screen instead of the second this rendition? It feels so weird to respond to "hi wrongaccount@gmail.com, click next to continue" with next.
> Note that this is strictly a change in visual appearance, there are no functionality impacts or changes.
> There is no admin control for this feature.
> There is no end user setting for this feature
What was the point of all this press noise then? Even in the Google product, they've been pestering me with these useless "the sign in page is getting a new look" notices.
This all feels like a huge nothingburger. Maybe all the public communications was only published to support some PM's promotion case at Google.
What press noise? This is a blog for Workspace admins that lists literally every update to Workspace no matter how big or small. But was submitted to HN for some reason.
Although the notification about "getting a new look" is important for security. After all, protecting yourself from phishing requires you to recognize that a site is legit. So showing that notification on the login page is a pretty obvious thing to do. (And I haven't seen it anywhere else.)
> Admins: There is no admin control for this feature.
> End users: There is no end user setting for this feature — users see these improvements automatically. Visit the Help Center to learn more about the new Google sign-in page.
It's fascinating to see the shift in tone between admins and end-users. For admins they know that all admins want to know is if they can do anything about it which they can't. For end users though, they devolve into PR-speak and direct people to help center articles. Seeing these directly next to each other is surreal.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 97.2 ms ] threadOn desktop, I found it to have weird buttons, weird spacing, weird controls and layouts with hamburger menus all over the place.
In terms of UI, Android 11 was the last good Android. Anything with Material looks awful. In fact, I will likely switch to Linux or Sailfish OS if possible when I have to replace my Android 11 phone.
I'm also not a fan of Material You to be honest, the "colors from your background" gimmick just results in all the colours being muddy boring desaturated ones, and the general low contrast + rounded look just doesn't work for me.
Even on mobile it's easy to miss! Google makes it a white button with a thin gray shadow, usually against white rows separated by thin gray lines.
If you squint, it literally becomes invisible because its visible weight is identical to its surroundings.
IIRC it used to be the solid accent color with white text, so you couldn't miss it. But now it's almost invisible unless you know where to look for it. It really is baffling.
Flat design has been the attempt to try to create a unified design language across desktop and mobile, since most people are constantly switching between the two and using the same apps across both.
You’ll be amazed how clean yet unusable the flat design is when you turn it off after a week
I know it’s a slight regression for password managers, it annoyed me at first, but I have made my peace with it as I understand the other security benefits. I’d recommend sorting your password manager out, I use 1Password and don’t have any problems. I think it’s something password managers will need to get better at quickly.
Splitting across two documents seems monstrous and probably insecure?
There's no point in blaming the pages -- blame lies with the password manager or browser/OS.
E.g. on iOS, Safari fills in your username just fine even when there's no password field. Whereas on iOS, third-party browsers (e.g. Chrome) won't. According to 1Password, it's a known bug that is up to Apple to support/fix in WebView. (And the fact that it works in Safari but not WebView seems a little anticompetitive...)
If I was unaware of the change, and somebody sent me a link, and I wanted more information about the change, and got sent a link to workspaceupdates.googleblog.com (without already knowing of it) I would think its a sophisticated phishing attempt. A corporation like google should really be pushing human trust through exclusive use of .google or .google.com
This is just their changelog page essentially, where every Workspace update is documented, no matter how large or small. The intended audience is Workspace admins.
On the other hand, why this trivial change is being upvoted here on HN as interesting news is totally baffling to me.
This is the only sentence that matters.
So it’s at least a karmically neutral change. You didn’t win anything and I didn’t lose anything.
[0] Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/
[1] Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dark-reader/eimadpb...
That seems like the worst time to add new functionality.
That was my fear when Apple rolled it out at the OS level -- that it would only ever be half useful because it just wouldn't become universally adopted.
Contrast that with, for example, 2x/3x retina resolution across apps and the web which is now totally standard. I almost never see icons or UX elements with blocky pixels anymore, except on extremely old forum software.
By this point I almost wish Apple would forcibly smart-invert everything that looks like light mode into dark mode at the OS level. Like trying to read Google News at night is a nightmare because half the articles are dark but half are light.
> There is no admin control for this feature.
> There is no end user setting for this feature
What was the point of all this press noise then? Even in the Google product, they've been pestering me with these useless "the sign in page is getting a new look" notices.
This all feels like a huge nothingburger. Maybe all the public communications was only published to support some PM's promotion case at Google.
Although the notification about "getting a new look" is important for security. After all, protecting yourself from phishing requires you to recognize that a site is legit. So showing that notification on the login page is a pretty obvious thing to do. (And I haven't seen it anywhere else.)
> End users: There is no end user setting for this feature — users see these improvements automatically. Visit the Help Center to learn more about the new Google sign-in page.
It's fascinating to see the shift in tone between admins and end-users. For admins they know that all admins want to know is if they can do anything about it which they can't. For end users though, they devolve into PR-speak and direct people to help center articles. Seeing these directly next to each other is surreal.
And of course problems with multi account issues and workspace addons is whatever…
Here, "more modern" probably means that "this did not change for a long time, so we can say that it is modern if we change it"