DuckDuckGo gets a new look

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news

by edwardy20 • 15 years ago

331 142 15 years ago

duckduckgo.com

realschool• 15 years ago

very nice, much cleaner looking....

mike-cardwell5• 15 years ago

The contents of the "More" menu would look a lot nicer with a bit of horizontal padding.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Yeah, this menu and the drop down next to the search box are both slated for redesign as well but didn't want to hold up the launch any more. Any specific suggestions on them would be greatly appreciated.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

My cursor isn't changing when floating over More, intentional?

huckfinnaafb• 15 years ago

The entire "More" menu seems out of place. I would expect it to have options related to search, and a few items in there definitely are relevant, but the presence of the Privacy and Feedback links make it seem like things were thrown in there because there wasn't anywhere else for them to go.

Minor comment: the spacing between the top of the page and the top of the search bar is inequal to the spacing from the bottom of the search bar to the top of the content body. 2px top margin to the #search_form seems to balance that out.

Otherwise, looks great. Love what you've done with the place.

dlikhten• 15 years ago

I love it except for the red bar on the top. Bad color choice. That is all. Keep up the improvements.

mike-cardwell5• 15 years ago

Can you explain this please? I like the colour... I'm not a "proper designer" though.

aw3c2• 15 years ago

I do not really like it either, might be "hypochondria" though and probably a different reason. To me it feels close to my eyes than the rest of the page. But the rest of the page are the search results, ie the stuff I am actually interested in.

I really dislike the sponsored link. Its tinting is very subtle and thus it blends into the site too well. Feels dishonest to me. Gonna CSS block it.

edit: Actually I guess I will use the non-JS version (nice!). Never knew about that. It has bugs (the whole result "box" is highlighted like on the normal site but you still have to click the title of the page, no problem but the highlight made me expect differently). It is also drastically faster for me, 5 times surely.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

I recognize this color isn't for everyone, and you can change it in the settings.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Sweet! Would be great if you could preview the change without going back to search.

singingwolfboy• 15 years ago

I agree. The red bar is a little too attention-grabbing. I want to look at the search results, not the top bar.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

There is the initial reaction and then there is living with it for a while. It has been de-saturated a lot, and after a pretty small time it blends in.

greut• 15 years ago

I was like: “what the f* happened” when it changed between two searches…

quanticle2• 15 years ago

Does anyone else find that they've been trained by Google's positioning of sponsored links into ignoring the first few links on a search page? I bring it up because on the Duck Duck Go search page, I missed the link to Hacker News the first couple times I looked. I was so conditioned by Google's sponsored link placement, I was treating the third link as if it was the first.

EDIT: Okay, I really don't like the positioning of the "official site" result. To me, it should be below the sponsored links, not above. The reason is that when you're searching for something where DDG doesn't have an "official site" entry, the first search result appears below the sponsored links. However, when DDG knows the "official site" for your search query, it places that result above the sponsored links. In practice, this means that you have to look in two places for the "first" result - above the sponsored links and below. Placing the "official site" result below the sponsored links would resolve this inconsistency.

m_for_monkey4• 15 years ago

I tell you a secret: you can turn off the ads in the settings menu.

I, personally, wouldn't mind the sponsored links if only they were relevant. Of course, if they were relevant, sponsoring wouldn't be necessary.

rkudeshi3• 15 years ago

Thanks, I didn't know about that setting!

I can only assume it won't be there forever for obvious reasons, but it's nice to have it for now (especially because of the UI issues mentioned elsewhere in this thread).

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

We've been fighting against this problem since we first launched. Our zero-click box has gone through several iterations with it in mind, and people kept skipping over it. This latest iteration I think (from user testing) does the best job so far of combating that unconscious inclination.

That's interesting on official site placement. We thought it would be better for the user to put that official site link first (it's also in the zero-click info box btw). But it people think it should be below, I have no problem with that.

jolan• 15 years ago

The only major color on the page is the red navbar and the yellow sponsored ad. The sponsored ad draws my attention and then I go below it since it's an ad.

The zero click info and official site badge are both grey which makes them fade away into the background; not stand out like intended.

felideon• 15 years ago

I'm no UI/UX expert here, but the official site does seem to get lost between the zero-click box and yellow sponsored result.

webnzi• 15 years ago

I think it's great. It's not the "normal" UI that people expect - and that's a good thing. Google defined what everyone seems to be calling normal. If people make the switch to DDG they'll understand how the results work and what to expect.

jader201• 15 years ago

I think it's going to just be a matter of "reconditioning". When you move from one UI to another, you tend to carry over habits from the other. But as you use the tool more, you'll become conditioned to paying more attention to the top gray box first, and then if that's not what you're looking for, moving to the results (below the sponsored link).

thaumaturgy• 15 years ago

I'm so used to visually ignoring ads that, because the sponsored link is hilited yellow, I notice it first, subconsciously realize that it's a sponsored link ("MP3 player for 'hacker news'? -- yeah, that's an ad), and then immediately start looking below it.

If I'd had just 5 seconds to glance at the page and then answer the question, "what was the top result for 'hacker news'?", I would have sworn up and down that it was "The Hacker News Network" and there was just empty space above the ad.

dpcan• 15 years ago

Google has done the research for you here, and placing the official site link above the sponsored links may seem like an interesting idea, but it shouldn't be there.

It should be the first site listed with all the other sites IMO.

Otherwise it's the "official" sponsored link in my mind. Which doesn't make much sense.

m_for_monkey4• 15 years ago

You should make more prominent the link to the official site in the zero-click box and don't display it twice. Right now the zero-click box header links to the Wikipedia article. That should point to the official site. (If the user disabled the zero-click box then list the ad links first, then the real results.)

teaneedz• 15 years ago

I personally like the official site placement. It saves me time. The sponsored link and yellow background is the floor and I'm drawn to everything above it (a problem if the official site is a sponsored link though I guess). It's a different experience from Google and it works for me - Google does not set UE or UI law. We've become accustomed to Google's way though and it's not necessarily wrong to offer a different experience. Getting past the UE expectations of Googlers though must be quite the product hurdle though.

ImprovedSilence• 15 years ago

I'd say one big reason I missed it at first was because there was no hacker news little orange [Y] box on the left side of the link. Scrolling further down the page, this logo appears on the second iteration of the HN link.

joshuahedlund• 15 years ago

Exactly. The lack of icon and description - which all the first few results below the sponsored link have - causes me to want to ignore the 'Official Site' result. If it had an icon I think I would be more likely to view the yellow as a break between the results rather than a separation between two different kinds of content.

samdk• 15 years ago

The positioning of sponsored links makes me very sad. I use j/k/enter to navigate most of the time, and this means that I need to worry about accidentally selecting a link with a near-100% probability of being completely useless to me. (It's really annoying when it's the first link, because I can't just press 'enter' to go to it.)

It also wastes a lot of screen space on a smaller screen, especially when the zero-click info box is there. Being able to see only 1-2 useful results instead of 2-3 is annoying.

I've been using DDG for over a year now as my primary search engine, and I like it quite a lot. I understand the need to make money, but I'm going to be very sad if I have to go find a new search engine because ads have compromised the UI.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

The previous ads on the right were taking up more space than this new sponsored link and they weren't being seen much, resulting in essentially zero effectiveness. Additionally, we continually get requests for actually having sponsored links in-line because when relevant they often add something to the result set.

So what we hoped to do is kill three birds with one stone: a) add in a relevant sponsored link (work in progress); b) generate real revenue to make the service self-sustainable (while still keeping it as minimal as possible); c) reclaim the space on the right side for more interesting interactions (more to come).

We've been testing this for a while on some traffic and it has preformed well with essentially zero complaint. We realize there will be some people who don't want it, which is why there is a setting to turn if off (ad block works too).

Also, the whole page has been compressed up so really it shouldn't be taking much more vertical space. In other words, with the smaller default fonts and other spacing changes that height has been removed from the page rendering it more of a wash with # of results on the page.

m_for_monkey4• 15 years ago

Have you considered an optional two-column layout to utilize horizontal space better?

sequoia• 15 years ago

http://screencast.com/t/34PsdV0G If you don't like ads, simply turn them off.

simon• 15 years ago

Ok, I'll be the guy who says that he likes the previous version. :-)

I don't dislike the new look, but it's not a dramatic departure. And I fail to see the problem that the new look solves. The red bar doesn't bother me, but is there a reason why the search button switches from green to blue? That seemed visually jarring.

I still have it as my default search engine, so don't worry, you haven't lost me as a customer.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

You can get most of the old colors via this link: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=test&kj=d&ky=g&k7=w&...

That uses our URL parameters: http://duckduckgo.com/params.html

You can also achieve this via the settings: http://duckduckgo.com/settings.html

Wilya2• 15 years ago

For a second, I thought : "Bad choice for an example query. It doesn't even finds the real HN."

Turns out Google has trained me to scroll past anything looking like a Sponsored link a bit too well.. It took me a few seconds to spot the "Official Site" link.

shaggy• 15 years ago

I really like it. I think it's clean, modern a nice color palette and an improvement over the previous version. Nice work DDG!

JS_startup• 15 years ago

It looks gorgeous. DDG has become my search engine of choice over the past month; clean design, no social media or other things garbaging up results. Use it!

aquark• 15 years ago

I like the new look. I've used DDG as a default search engine on my main computer for several months now and kept Google on others.

Recently I've noticed that I am consistently missing some of DDG's features when still using Google so it must be time to switch over everywhere.

mike-cardwell5• 15 years ago

I think the "Official Site" buttons should be made more prominent and to look more like an official seal. I just pulled a random image out of Google Images to try and explain what I mean:

http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/images/certificate.jpg

The golden icon in the bottom left of that image. Something like that.

zach• 15 years ago

I think just using a pastel color on the "Official Site" lozenge would work well. Maybe a goldenrod to suggest the idea you're trying to communicate.

The gold seal/blue ribbon idea is a good one but may disrupt the very-text-based rhythm of this page.

wgx3• 15 years ago

Is there a way I can make 'typing into the address bar' search DDG by default?

If I can get this set up, then I'm fully switched.

mike-cardwell5• 15 years ago

Which browser? In Firefox I do this by going to about:config, and setting "keyword.URL" to:

https://duckduckgo.com/?kh=1&kg=p&k1=-1&kp=-1...

You might want to fiddle with the parameters though. For example, I'm specifying that my country is the UK in the above URL

wgx3• 15 years ago

Nice, thanks. Also UK here.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Sure, depends on your browser: http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216425-b...

wgx3• 15 years ago

Ah great - thank you! :)

tansey• 15 years ago

Not to be too harsh here, but wouldn't you want that URL to be a little bit better optimized for search engines?

Just look at the results for "how to make duckduckgo my default search engine": https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+make+duckduckgo+my+default+...

quanticle2• 15 years ago

For Firefox, there's a search plugin (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duck-duck-go-...) that adds DuckDuckGo to the list of search providers.

For Chrome, it appears to be a little more complicated. You can use DuckDuckGo for searches, but it doesn't look like you can alter the source for URL suggestions. Details on how to use DuckDuckGo as Chrome's search provider are here: http://ddgg.nfriedly.com/#oneclick.

dhruvbird• 15 years ago

Consistent UI theme-ing in the new look! :)

duck• 15 years ago

How do you determine what makes something an "official site"? I see it with the "Hacker News" search here, and with Twilio for example, but not with Fog Creek or Ford.

You guys keep doing awesome work Gabriel, keep it up!

______• 15 years ago

I am curious about this too. Nothing in the support center directly addresses this -- perhaps a brief explanation would be good to add there?

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

We do this often through our 0-click sources, e.g. Wikipedia though there is an algorithmic component as well. However, we try not to have false positives so it is clamped down pretty tight.

Wilya2• 15 years ago

I thought I had heard that they looked at the Url/Website field on the Wikipedia page for the company, but it would work for Fog Creek too. Strange.

DBpedia [1], for example, seems to have nicely formatted dumps of all infoboxes.

[1] http://wiki.dbpedia.org/Datasets

faramarz• 15 years ago

I'm curious why the results are center aligned? It's a very odd placement for search results. Perhaps it has to do with the filters being on the right, instead of filling the white-space to the left side.

Studies also suggest that we are trained to read from top left.

I made two revisions for comparison http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6689971833_94c5b35d3e_b.j...

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

On smaller screens they move over to the left, and you can also change the alignment in the settings. We've always preferred the center look.

lloeki2• 15 years ago

I actually enjoy this, but it makes something unbalanced in the top bar. The "search box + more" is aligned with the centered text, but the 'more' button color makes it disappear layout-wise. Coloring it the same as the search button would make it more button-y and would overall balance the layout more.

Other design nitpicks:

- the search button is green on the home page but blue on the results page (while the goose knot is still green).

- the menus like behind the 'more' button feel out of place (weirly sized, lacks padding and all). They do not 'flow' enough out of the buttons so they feel floaty and disconnected to their trigger.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion.

On the search button: on the homepage it goes with the logo tie more, but on the inner page all the green makes it look too much like Christmas. And then in testing, people generally actually liked how it changed (a bit fresher). However, this could be a target for another setting.

On the menus, they will be redesigned.

peregrine2• 15 years ago

Love the new look. One thing I want to bring up is page load speed. I went 2 weeks with DDG as my default search engine for all browsers but I had to switch back because of the difference in page load speed. Its just .5-1 second slower then Google and I cannot stand it.

I would find the results to be fine, and the interface to be good but the fact I had to wait slightly longer drove me absolutely up the wall.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Thanks. I completely understand and know that speed is a continual top priority.

peregrine2• 15 years ago

Thanks! Good to see its not just me and that its something that is actively being worked on.

Corrado• 15 years ago

I tried a DDG experiment on my home machine and after 6 weeks or so I switched back to Google. Sometimes DDG was almost as fast as my thought process but very often I found myself waiting several seconds for search results.

It sounds trivial but those were very, very long seconds. When I'm in the middle of a deep programming problem I need an answer now while it's still fresh in my mind. Giving me 2 seconds for my mind to wander off is too much.

Another problem that I had was that there was no way to sort my results. However, that looks to be solved with the latest DDG interface. :)

Get the speed up and I'll be back!

Purgox• 15 years ago

You could try http://duckduckgo.com/html for faster responses. :)

yaix• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, I don't like it. Not because its new, but because I don't like "position:fixed" elements when I scroll. I am using a netbook most of the time and all these fixed elements take up half of my screen (maybe not half, but feels like it). When I scroll, I do it because I want to scroll, not because I want most of the GUI to not move. Unfortunately, position:fixed seems to be the current "thing" to do for many designers :(

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

This part hasn't changed in the new visual design, but duly noted. Note you can changed the fixed header in the settings as well as turn off the sidebar.

lftl• 15 years ago

I wonder if you could use media queries, to drop the fixed positioning if screen size is below a certain height.

SquareWheel• 15 years ago

Going to throw my vote in here as well. I hate position:fixed and am constantly writing CSS hacks to remove these elements on pages. It's a trend I don't like, and yet it's becoming very common. I'm just a grumpy person that hates change, though.

draggnar2• 15 years ago

completely customizable, check the settings :)

m_for_monkey4• 15 years ago

The best thing about DDG that it's very configurable. Many commenters here complaining about things they could easily change in the settings menu, like colors, advertisements, floating header, results placed in the middle, etc.

elisee2• 15 years ago

Looks like a clean, straight-to-the-point design.

The top box has some padding issues when hovering the contained links: there's more padding on the left than on the right, and the first link has more padding on the right than the next two (tested in latest stable Chrome & Firefox). See screenshot: http://polyprograms.free.fr/tmp/DuckDuckGoPaddingTopBox.png

On an unrelated note: I have a hard time taking your service seriously because of the duck branding and the DuckDuckGo name. It looks like you're doing a great job but somehow DuckDuckGo doesn't feel like a name for something I would use on a day-to-day basis. I guess I can just overlook it if the service is good enough but I do wonder if your brand is hurting your service. Maybe it's just me though!

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Thanks for the screenshot -- I'm adding those padding issues to Asana.

We've had endless brand name discussions from the beginning :). So duly noted!

mattw• 15 years ago

For the record, I switched to DDG in part because of the duck. (All right, so it was a very small part, but the point remains--the duck is awesome.) :)

omaranto• 15 years ago

Which search engine do you use? The ones I've tried all have silly names: Google, Bing!, Duck Duck Go, Blekko...

kennywinker• 15 years ago

Yahoo!

zotz• 15 years ago

Dogpile.

bmj• 15 years ago

But "google" is pretty normal, right? Or "yahoo?" Or "bing?"

Your point is well-taken, but I think it's just a matter of normalizing the name. Granted, "duck, duck, go" doesn't roll off the tongue as smoothly as the other services, but I'm not sure that's a critical issue.

elisee2• 15 years ago

I think you've made it clearer for me: the fact that it feels like a sentence plays a big part in the weird factor, it's like I'm addressing someone instead of citing a name for a service.

But I guess it's a minor concern indeed. I just wouldn't feel very confident using a similar name for a product of my own, knowing that it could be a turn-off.

landhar2• 15 years ago

We've started calling it ddg among my friends, it has a nice ring to it, to bad they don't have a url using this acronym since it's also very fast to type.

insanecanadian• 15 years ago

They offer http://ddg.gg as a short option.

losvedir• 15 years ago

It's worth noting for non-Americans that it's a play on the common children's game "Duck Duck Goose" (I think).

brador• 15 years ago

Don't like it.

I really hope people stop copying the Google/microsoft "big block color squares" UI strategy. Please copy Apple more, gradients and buttons that stand out nicely and perfectly rounded corners. Things which pop out of the screen nicely.

reader_1000• 15 years ago

I think the problem with the official site result is that offical site element is smaller than the others which makes me think that it is less important and less relevant to the search. Some description text or something else should be added to official site element to make it more notable.

Also I am wondering if DDG has a plan to add suggestions to their search. I use suggestions a lot in Google search and it would be nice to have them in DDG also so that transtion from other search engines to DDG will be smoother.

pak2• 15 years ago

I have to say, why such loud mouseover effects? It's distracting to have all these boxes popping in and out as I scroll through the results. I get that you're trying to show that the click area is that big, but it impairs readability--most of the time while using a search engine I am reading very quickly. Perhaps some people leave their mouse off to the side when they scroll, but many people "think with their mouse," pointing at stuff as they look at it.

I would personally tone them down to just the underline appearing on the result link (where that activates for the big click area, and not just when mousing over the link within the big click area).

achompas• 15 years ago

I have to disagree. DuckDuckGo + keyboard is great for searching docs, Stack Overflow, etc., and the box helps me navigate with j/k.

pak2• 15 years ago

I'll agree that it's about the right contrast for keyboard navigation, but a compromise is straightforward: show it only after pressing j/k (as with the current behavior), and use a much subtler effect for mouse hover.

zcid2• 15 years ago

I definitely agree with this although I think you could lighten the shading and get away with the current method. The dark grey just creates too much of a contrast change for me to read it easily. It only adds a split second to my reading time, but it is noticeable.

I also don't really like the boxes/buttons at the top (they look very much like every other site trying to create a mickey mouse design), but this is probably just my natural resistance to change. I probably won't even notice in a week.

I changed to DDG a while back as my default search engine and must say that I've been extremely happy with it. To hear about an interface upgrade was initially a little upsetting as it brings to mind the recent changes to Google. The preview and instant search features are what finally pushed me to the simplicity of DDG. I'm glad you kept the same clean design and didn't try to change what already works wonderfully. Please keep up the great work.

underwater2• 15 years ago

I don't mind it. I think the biggest problem is that it uses JavaScript. The small delay between hover and style change makes the site feel sluggish. Using the :hover pseudo class would be better, and is supported by all browsers other than IE6.

mkl• 15 years ago

I agree - I've turned it off in the settings.

larrys• 15 years ago

Who is supplying the sponsored links? There isn't anything on ddg that gives any information other than this:

http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216405-m...

Gabriel, how does someone purchase a sponsored link?

Edit: Appears that this is going through msn if you look at the URL that is generated.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

We're looking into different providers, but right now that is coming through BOSS, though you're right that is MSN on the backend.

mickeyckm• 15 years ago

I love the ajax loading of results. no more paging, just scrolling. Now I wish it could be my default search engine in my Chrome omnibar.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

It can! Just go to the homepage and click Add to Chrome at the bottom.

rkudeshi3• 15 years ago

It's actually pretty easy to make it the default in Chrome: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/08/changing-the-default-search-...

draggnar2• 15 years ago

After using duckduckgo for a few months, as my default in chrome... the bang syntax is worth it. There are !bangs for everything!

Also if you don't like the colors everything is customizable in the settings. I switched the search results width to wide which is quite nice.

faboo• 15 years ago

I'll second the bang syntax. As the your browser's search provider, it's like having dozens of context-specific search engines built in.

runjake• 15 years ago

It looks clean, if a bit too Googly, but I like it. I especially like the results layout.

Gabriel, any chance we could get a "do not include results from this domain" option in the results? You guys do a really good job of carving the cruft out, but I still find no use in sites like Mahalo and Mashable.

rkudeshi3• 15 years ago

I love the new design. I preferred the old color scheme (light green feels easier on the eyes), but I'm sure I'll quickly get used to the new one. Other than that, everything seems much more consistently designed and cleaner. Great job.

PS. I've been trying out DDG for a while and switched over almost completely in the last few months. I find increasingly fewer searches for which I need to jump over to Google, too. Even better, once I explained to my dad how DDG was different than other search engines, he WANTED me to switch his computer to DDG. I predict 2012 is going to be a heckuva year for y'all!

ufo• 15 years ago

I guess the new color scheme must be their secret way of pointing us to the color customization page. And also an underhanded way to get us to accept their cookies :)

54mf2• 15 years ago

The new UI has a lot of really nice touches, and is a lot cleaner than it used to be. Kudos for that. The magnifying glass and menu arrow in the header are gorgeous, I love the dotted line between the two. Really nice.

That said, there are a lot of issues, in my opinion. Clicking that menu arrow pops out a really bland box with no padding and no structure to the content. The "header" text is wrapped in dashes, but the text looks exactly the same as the rest of the text in the box. Like someone else said, the mouseover effect on the individual results is really harsh. The zero-click box at the top fades in to the background, and the sponsored link is intrusive and throws off the flow of the entire page.

I hope you folks keep working, because the progress I've seen in the last couple years has really been great and I want DDG to be a huge success. Search is completely ripe for disruption - Google got simplicity right, but most of their recent updates have been boring or steps backwards. Keep fighting the good fight. And if you're ever looking to hire a UI / UX designer, let me know where to apply. :)

MrJagil• 15 years ago

Wouldn't it make sense to have the zero-click info on the left side instead of all that white space? Once you realize it's there you'd always have instantanious access to both zero-click info and all of the most accurate results without needing to scroll. Further, you could have a very elaborate zero-click info box instead of the current, heavily compressed one.

Right now the center seems very stuffed.

rglover• 15 years ago

Don't entirely recall the old design, but this is really well done. Simple and to the point. A little bit of room for improvement, but that will come from further iteration and feedback from users.

Best part: infinite scroll. Google could learn something from this (yes I realize entire businesses are built on "getting on page one of Google," but this makes searching much more fluid).

leak• 15 years ago

Doesn't infinite scroll take away from potential advertising?

pbhjpbhj• 15 years ago

No reason you can't bring up more adverts with each new "page" of content added on to the scroll.

wesley• 15 years ago

Great, now get rid of the duck.

brackin• 15 years ago

Long time DuckDuckGo user, very excited by this update. All I want at this point is speed.

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

I am all for using really small fonts, but this is a bit too unreadable - http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/2720/unreadable.png

logic• 15 years ago

Might be helpful to mention OS and browser.

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

FF8 on W7/x64

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Noted -- that font size could probably be increased a bit.

strager• 15 years ago

Not just that; in Chrome 16 (OS X), I can't scale the font up myself like I used to be able to do with the page zoom options. (I could probably define myself a CSS for DDG, though...)

newobj• 15 years ago

Made DDG my default search engine in Chrome today. Not because of the redesign, but just because I think it's time to start looking at alternatives. (The fact that I don't even need to qualify what I'm seeking an alternative to means I should be looking at alternatives!)

richardburton• 15 years ago

Just switched to DuckDuckGo as my default Chrome search-engine. Should be fun :)

underwater2• 15 years ago

Great work Gabriel. I've just switched to DDG as my default search engine. A few suggestions though:

The divider between the search and drop down buttons should use alpha-blended colors rather than dotted lines. It looks really bad in some situations, for example the :active state on the drop down button looks like it doesn't darken the divider. Edit Just noticed the down state on the front page search button is actually a pixel off. The down arrow also dips a pixel on active state.

The :active state on the more button is missing the last few pixels at the bottom.

The results don't have padding to the right. When a result is highlighted the description text can run all the way to the right border. Also see the "Internet search engines" hover state for q=DuckDuckGo.

Consider packaging your image resources into sprite sheets (check out http://spriteme.org/). There are flickers when I use some elements for the first time. Most noticeably the :hover state for the search suggestions and toggling the plus/minus button. Clear your cache to see them.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Wow, thanks for all the specific suggestions!

_pius• 15 years ago

Wow, this is such an improvement! Great job!

LeafStorm• 15 years ago

Something about the formatting and typography in the "bang" dropdown just bugs the heck out of me. It appears very unpolished and boring compared to the rest of the design.

Though overall, this design does look much nicer than the previous one.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Yup! That hasn't changed (it is just a native select box right now), but will so soon.

blahedo• 15 years ago

Oh, please don't! I like native controls. They actually work well. Every site I have ever seen that has reimplemented popups and scrollboxes and whatnot, has missed many of the little UI tweaks that help our experience and took three decades to get right in the first place. E.g.: if I veer briefly outside the width of a native popdown menu, it doesn't go away. At a lot of sites with some sort of popdown menu, if you go one pixel outside the boundaries, the menu goes away and you have to go up and re-select it. And if the site gets that bit right, there's other things they've missed. Reimplementing a GUI OS in Javascript is not a good use of our time....

manifold• 15 years ago

Edit: (search box was broken: http://i.imgur.com/Z5chu.png) Ah, it was a zoom issue with firefox. I like the redesign. Perhaps long-term you can make zoomed/unzoomed pages degrade more gracefully, or at least keep the search bar on top :)

Meai• 15 years ago

Well the main page is good but the search results are still overcrowded. The hover-effect on the search results is distracting. It just diverts attention from the results. I doubt many people really read like this: "hover mouse over first result: Not it. Ok, up to the next one: Hover mouse over second result. Not it. Ok next one."

Then of course, it bothers me that I have to pay attention to where I click, and if I want to copy paste text, I have to be exact about it, otherwise I accidentally click on whitespace that will direct me to a result page.

It's just too much "cognitive work" associated with the UI.

Matt_Cutts• 15 years ago

Hey Gabriel, I know that DDG promised on http://donttrack.us that you don't send searches to other sites.

This was the first time that I've seen MSN ads, so I did a search for flowers and clicked on the ad I got. I landed on the url: http://ww11.1800flowers.com/collection.do?dataset=11385&... which has the word "Flowers" in the url.

That seemed strange, so I did the search [chocolate of the month club] on DuckDuckGo and clicked on the Microsoft ad. I ended up on http://www.amazingchocolateclub.com/?utm_source=MSN&utm_... which has "chocolate of the month club" in the url.

I tried some more esoteric searches. The search [one fruit a month] returned an ebay link http://duckduckgo.com/k/?u=http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711...

It looks like the "icep_uq" parameter in the ebay link has exactly my search query, [one fruit a month]?

I know you've made "we don't send your searches to other sites" a pretty major policy at http://donttrack.us/ . With these ads, do you know whether searches on DuckDuckGo are sometimes sent to other sites?

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

Thanks Matt. I removed that block while I investigate, and will report back when I know more. It's obviously not our intention to leak any search results through us.

Edit: still reviewing to make sure, but it appears that it isn't sending the search term via us. In fact, that's why it is going through our server, to specifically strip out the referrer. This appears to be an optional setting in the Microsoft ad center that sends the keyword bid for that ad.

Edit2: that does appear to be it. If I take all your examples and append ssn to the query, ssn doesn't appear in the resulting URL. I'm guessing they just have broad match on for those terms. You probably know as well as anyone that the coverage in the query space for ad terms is pretty wide, so if you search for something near the head you're bound to hit something exactly. I also tried a bunch of other queries, and since this setting is optional a lot of times the advertiser didn't set it and so their bid term is not send back; this is the case for example if I search for google and up at https://www.google.com/chrome?hl=en&brand=CHFX&utm_c...

simonbrown• 15 years ago

What's the point of the non-SSL link for Wikipedia? I can't imagine someone who knows what SSL is actively clicking it.

epi0Bauqu30• 15 years ago

I recall that the SSL wikipedia link didn't work right on some mobile browsers, but maybe that is fixed now as they've changed the way that is all set up.

mirkules• 15 years ago

Are there any plans to implement auto-complete? It helps me when I search for technical problems to see if a) I'm on the right track, or b) if there are any alternatives to the search term that I'm looking for or c) if I'm not sure what exactly to look for

For example, if I enter "ios uiview " it will autocomplete with things like "animation", "lifecycle" etc and then select the right one.

Nonetheless, thanks for making DDG awesome :)

DuckDuckGo gets a new look

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