The next version of DuckDuckGo

https://next.duckduckgo.com

by vgnanand • 12 years ago

738 322 12 years ago

next.duckduckgo.com

yegg11• 12 years ago

Hi all, thanks for checking it out and we're looking forward to your feedback! This next version of DuckDuckGo is in public beta. Here's the post about it I just made: https://duck.co/forum/thread/5726/duckduckgo-reimagined-and-...

There are still a lot known issues that we're still working through before we can make the transition. I'm sure this thread will uncover more :)

diggan• 12 years ago

I just tried it out. Wanted to find "phpng" that was released just now. Search returns results for "phong" and no way to force it to use the term phpng. Otherwise, it looks good and works as well as the other "older" one. Good job.

yegg11• 12 years ago

Ahh, yes that is actually a fix we're presently working on and should make it in soon!

ToastyMallows• 12 years ago

You can put quotes around phpng to force DDG to search that word. Though this should only be a temporary fix until the real problem is fixed.

wink• 12 years ago

I don't know what you mean by 'released'. If we're talking about the same thing, it's a) a single mailing list thread and b) a wiki page, which google finds.

But as another check just revealed, DDG does not seem to index php.net very much, cf. https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=string+inurl%3Aphp.net

It also does not find any php related content for my real name, whereas google does, a lot.

Edit: my bad, it seems to be site: and not inurl:

nacs• 12 years ago

If you use quotes around the search term, it does find 2 results: https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=%22phpng%22

geekam• 12 years ago

I'd like a little better code and programming related search. For anything related to code-search I have to switch to Google at this point.

yegg11• 12 years ago

Would love some specific examples we can take a look at. We're working on many programming related instant answers, e.g. https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=nginx+vs+apache & https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=perl+split

ep1033• 12 years ago

https://search.nerdydata.com/

I forget the name of the other one, but there's another one similar to this too.

vgnanand• 12 years ago

The image and video search is slick. great job.

iconjack• 12 years ago

How are you searching for images? I used !images but it just sent me to Google Images.

3rd3• 12 years ago

It looks absolutely beautiful! That really puts the interface of the Google search in a tight spot.

Only one remark: While I like the effect that the full URL shows up when the mouse is above a search entry I would personally prefer to see the full URL all the time. I would be very happy if you could add an option to change that.

pestaa3• 12 years ago

You can often extract lots of extra information from the URL, most importantly the date of publishing (y/m/d).

RogerL• 12 years ago

Agreed. For example, search for 'anaconda python'. In google, the second result is very obviously the download page for anaconda. In DDG? Good luck discovering that. Just one example that popped immediately to mind.

Schlaefer• 12 years ago

Google does one thing right that makes me quit DDG: put the URL next/below the title. What and where together.

90+% I don't need the Why and parsing over it to find the URL is distracting.

ohblahitsme• 12 years ago

How do you guys feel about telling us a bit about your algorithms and data structures? I'm always fascinated by that kind of stuff.

senorerik• 12 years ago

It's looking great! My only gripe is the lack of contrast in the results. I find it a bit harder to parse than before.

The image and video showcase is well thought out. It is digestible and smooth complement to the general search, well done!

terminado2• 12 years ago

For the love of christ, whatever you do, please don't ever implement "DuckDuckGo Instant®".

This auto-complete predictive suggestion list business isn't half bad, but there's nothing I hate more about Google than their bloody "Instant" features.

coherentpony2• 12 years ago

Nothing wrong with implementing it and giving users an option to turn it on or off.

Immediate disregard seems a little harsh.

cainetighe5• 12 years ago

We were on the fence about autocomplete for a variety of reasons, but tried to be careful about minimizing distraction. It was too great a vector to introduce !bang autocomplete :). As always, please let us know what you think as it evolves!

jfoster• 12 years ago

Can you explain what you don't like about it? I was just thinking the (almost) opposite, that a full page reload after searching seems unnecessary.

JetSpiegel• 12 years ago

Having Image search is the best feature of all. Can we get a search page exclusively for images? I mean having that images popup occupy the entire page.

As for the rest, as long as the dark/terminal themes still work (there are small bugs), that's fine by me.

pestaa3• 12 years ago

Clicking the grid icon in the top right corner gives you more results, but a dedicated image-only search result page would indeed be very appreciated.

jtfairbank2• 12 years ago

Bug Report

  1. I search for "ng angular", which takes me to https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=ng%20angular
  2. I've been to the top link before (http://angular-ui.github.io/ng-grid/).
  3. I hover over the 'Visited Site' checkbox icon, and the hover text is obscured by the search area (specifically around the Image and Video tabs).

On a related note, I find the interaction with checkboxes a little bit confusing. They disappear on hover when the text shows up (seems unnecessary, I'm left wondering why my icon disappeared). You can also hover over them on unvisited links and get the same message. Personally I'd prefer to see them as static icons, only shown on visited sites. I can hover over existing ones to get a message "you've visited this site before", which is clearer than "your browser indicates...". They do send a very clear message and are a great addition to the UI.

Overall great job. Looks super clean, I love the image and video dropdowns... keep making it easy for me to use DDG!

Edit: also submitted through your feedback system. Just gotta grab those hacker news points while they're there for the picking right? ;)

jtfairbank2• 12 years ago

May want to make your Feedback process a bit more direct- like have a "next.duckduckgo.com beta" box similar to "Help" and "Forum".

nickconfer• 12 years ago

Hi Yegg. Very interesting update. Two suggestions for places..

1) If I search "self storage columbia mo" I get place results but if I "search self storage 65203" I do not get place results. I noticed this does work for food using a more familiar zipcode like 90210.. but maybe still a little zip code work to be done.

2) What about when I search "thai" or "self storage" in general. DuckDuckGo is known for not tracking the user, but if I search something that with location information would most likely provide place results, shouldn't I be given some type of indicator that with just a zipcode or city name I could be given better results? That way you are educating new users while still providing them the results they need and the privacy DuckDuckGo is known for.

axelfreeman• 12 years ago

Bug Report: If i play a video in the webseite, stop it, go to the video grid and then replay it, i have an echo. Tested with Chrome on Ubuntu. I also sent this via the feedback button. :-)

ronaldx4• 12 years ago

The auto-suggest feature feels like a step backwards in terms of privacy:

- it indicates that there's a fairly thorough recording of searches going on, and acknowledges a reasonable possibility of keypress-by-keypress recording, and

- it doesn't work as well as google's version which accounts for local variation, and which formed part of my decision to reject google in favour of ddg.

Overall this feature creeps me out, in an "uncanny valley" kind of way. It makes me uncomfortable.

yegg11• 12 years ago

To be clear, we still don't collect or share personal information and auto-suggest does not impact that at all. I appreciate it may make you and others uncomfortable and we're sensitive to that, but it is not a change in terms of privacy. We simply do not associate queries with personal information (e.g. IP addresses) and in fact don't store any of it at all.

andrey-p• 12 years ago

Fully agree, these were the same things that popped in my head when I saw it. Though I have to say autocomplete for !commands is an excellent addition.

snird• 12 years ago

Hi yegg, I want to express one wish I would like to see Duck Duck G0 maybe considering: I use duck duck go for its privacy, but it seems like duck duck go assumes I want absolute anonymity which is not necessarily right. I just want my own controlled privacy, and I want a good search engine that know me a bit. and I wish to give some of my privacy for that. what do I mean? if there will be an option to tell duck duck go what "categories" I'm interested in, so that it will use this data to give me better results I would love to do that. say, I can mark 'technology' and 'science' under my subject of interest and 'celebrity' and 'sports' under my subjects of disinterest.

Do you think something like that might be possible someday or it completely goes against your philosophy?

dpcan• 12 years ago

The Install in Chrome thing doesn't appear to work. Won't allow me to save even when the Keyword field is empty. Not sure if that's a Chrome thing or DDG thing.

EDIT:

Sorry, it looks like it installed the first time. I tried to do a search. It kept using Google. So I thought it didn't install. I tried again. The keyword had already been installed, so it didn't work. Turned out it was already installed and I had to manually set it as my search provider.

alexhektor• 12 years ago

It does show however how hard chrome makes it to change search engines. Probably right at the line there between really hard and antitrust.

frik• 12 years ago

The snippet excerpt needs some points "...". E.g. searching for "two":

one two three four ... one-hundred, two-hundred, three

SrslyJosh• 12 years ago

Things I like:

1) The checkbox for visited links. However, I think there should be an infobox (visible by default) explaining what it is the first few times you search. A link explaining how it works (for the privacy conscious) would also be good.

Things I don't like:

1) Moving the favicon below the page snippet. I think it should actually be up top and larger, since it's useful for skimming results.

2) Lack of color/contrast. Feels like someone sucked the life out of the site. This is important, because (for example) when I'm skimming results it's helpful to have the page titles (blue) stand out from the snippet (black).

3) Left-aligned results. I find it easier to skim the results when they're centered, rather than left-aligned. This is something people who have been using Google won't notice, but after reading DDG's centered results for a year or so, going back feels jarring, like I'm going out of my way to read them there. The center of the screen seems to be where I look first for content.

4) Larger header. Vertical space is precious, especially when you consider how much is already consumed by an OS menu bar, browser chrome (titlebar, address bar, bookmark bar, tab bar, status bar) and (on Mac OS) the Dock at the bottom of the screen.

bjitty• 12 years ago

First impressions are good. Looks clean, I like auto complete. I also like the autocomplete for shortcuts (!).

I've set it as my home page (was already using ddg for my main search).

Is there a way to turn off the links at the bottom under the search? Set as homepage, etc? I keep mousing over them and the popups are distracting. I understand why they need to be there for new users.

Great work and thanks for what you do.

daGrevis• 12 years ago

To continue about auto-complete, would it be possible to add Tab button as a valid button to go to the next item (Shift-Tab to go back)?

shenoybr• 12 years ago

It is really beautiful. The minimalistic user interface is much more usable now. And the results for some test queries I ran were pretty good. Great work! I'm going to switch my default search engine for a few days and see how that goes.

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

Looks beautiful. My only criticism is that you could make better use of all the whitespace the the right on the search screen. Maybe expand the width of search items to fill some unused space + increase the number of search items above the fold.

moollaza• 12 years ago

You can actually increase the width of the results, if you prefer. It's in the settings: https://next.duckduckgo.com/settings

Click on the "Look and Feel" tab, then change the "width" :)

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

Great, that looks better, thanks.

johnnyg• 12 years ago

DDG has been my primary search engine for nearly 2 years. I love you guys for both your service and your mission.

You've struggled in the past with local searches and map inferences to non-address searches (think "Godwin Park Houston").

I threw those at next.ddg and the result back were very good. I don't see having to !g a query for these in future.

I'll edit as I use the beta in the next few days but first impression is "Hot damn, it works! Good job!"

Edit 1: There are still dot coms and business I search for that I don't get the "map this for me" option. Examples:

https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=cpap.com

https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=men%27s+warehouse (do I want a wiki article or do I want to find the ones close?)

https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=whole+foods

Edit 2: The UI is so clean and nice.

cainetighe5• 12 years ago

Cool! We always received a fair amount of feedback about better local search and the redesign attempts to plug a few holes. Any feedback would be great; we're just getting started!

highwind• 12 years ago

Try this query: https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=whole+foods+falls+church+va

timr• 12 years ago

http://www.bing.com/search?q=whole+foods+falls+church+va&go=...

gabriel346• 12 years ago

Wow!

Loved it, very clean yet all the info is there

Plus image and video search! Really nice to have a clean image search interface with a clear download button. Do you proxy my search to youtube? What other sites are there?

EDIT: also, great response to browser zoom

Jake2322• 12 years ago

I've always wondered. How do these guys hit google search so much without hitting limitations?

Google is pretty aggressive at banning bots, and I can't imagine Google have given a competitor API access or something like that. Proxies is out of the question for this scale too.

dmunoz2• 12 years ago

I'm fairly certain that they do not proxy searches to Google.

I heave heard that they do use Bing and Yahoo search APIs, but this could be incorrect.

Mithrandir• 12 years ago

You're correct: https://duck.co/help/results/sources

Jake2322• 12 years ago

That makes sense, thanks.

zyang2• 12 years ago

The button icons are a few px off - very unsettling.

yegg11• 12 years ago

Which ones? Perhaps this is a browser issue.

zyang2• 12 years ago

Here https://www.evernote.com/shard/s259/sh/83a4a781-7511-4815-b6...

jonalmeida2• 12 years ago

I started using DDG a long time ago when it first came out. I asked for a few stickers to add at my IT department, but I got a good bunch instead.

There are now random DDG stickers in various cities around southern Ontario.

pestaa3• 12 years ago

Any way to get some more in Europe?

jonalmeida2• 12 years ago

You can buy some from: http://www.stickermule.com/duckduckgo

I still have a few with me. I can send you some if you want (contact details in profile).

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

Well kudos on letting my right click and copy URL from search results! I hate how Google insists on using https://www.google.com.bo/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=we... - yeah Google, totally makes sense.

Godspeed duckduckgo!

tinalumfoil• 12 years ago

The reason Google sends you through a redirect instead of directly to the site is to prevent those sites from tracking what you searched to get there. When websites look in their referrer header they'll see http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rc...url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample... instead of "https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=example".

This gives them the advantage of you only being able to see what Google Searches brought people to their site through Google Analytics.

magicalist• 12 years ago

This gives them the advantage of you only being able to see what Google Searches brought people to their site through Google Analytics

Search terms come in Google's Webmaster Tools. You can only get them in Analytics if you hook up your Webmaster Tools account to your Analytics Account.

andreasvc• 12 years ago

This fixes such links: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/clean-links/

There's probably something similar for Chrome as well.

joshbert• 12 years ago

This is fantastic. I already had DDG as my search engine, this just takes it to the next level. I'll be looking forward to the full release. Kudos!

mercnet• 12 years ago

I just recently switched to duckduckgo and I wasn't a fan of the search results UI (spent a lot of time in settings) but this looks beautiful!

Skalman• 12 years ago

In general, it looks really good.

- I'd like some more focus on keyboard navigation. Make sure that everything looks good when tabbing, even if you've used arrow keys first.

- Anti-phishing: A long domain name will trim the end in the "More from ..." link. Instead it would make sense to trim the beginning.

- Needs better contrast.

galapago• 12 years ago

Guide: This room is the most popular part of our tour. Milhouse: It's just like the other rooms. Guide: Yes, but with one important difference: [looks over] Oh, they took that out. Yes, it is just like the other rooms.

prottmann• 12 years ago

My personal view:

I am a technican. I want to see the number of results. I don't like AutoSroll. I remember the page where i find a result, so i jump to the page, with endless scroll, i did not find things again.

The sign of clicked links is a good idea.

Mark a personal favorite site in combination with my search term would be a great feature. E.g. i remember i search something about nodejs but i forgot the sitename, my browser bookmark did not help me. But when i see my old search about "nodejs" and the favorite or clicked pages, that would be a great thing.

Forget google, if somebody want to use google, he can use google. So please implement usefull functions that help people with their daily work.

cubancigar11• 12 years ago

I sure hope I am not the only one who dislikes the new look. Ref:

1. Old DDG: http://s388.photobucket.com/user/cubancigar11/media/snapshot...

2. New DDG: http://s388.photobucket.com/user/cubancigar11/media/snapshot...

There are so many problems here:

1. Poor contrast of font-colors.

2. Poor choice of font - bold doesn't really standout as much as it should.

3. Font spacing has increased which forces me to scroll down thus breaking my thought process.

4. Icons now take vertical space instead of horizontal.

5. Mouse-hover color change has poor contrast. On my desktop I can only see it through a specific unnatural angle.

ep1033• 12 years ago

I think it looks better than the original, though. That giant red bar at the top, with a yellow box underneath always reminded me of the original ask jeeves search page, with its giant blue bar up top http://i.imgur.com/7LYUXre.jpg

pessimizer• 12 years ago

You're not the only one, but I think this look will work better with people who are not me (people like me are already a pretty captive group for DDG), and who currently use other search engines. It's very trendy. I prefer growth for the search engine over the old look.

saiko-chriskun• 12 years ago

I would really love to switch but it still pales in comparison to google on a lot of searches.

http://bit.ly/1ur3zP2 vs. https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=medium+top+collections

ep1033• 12 years ago

It uses the bing / yahoo APIs, and it doesn't use search context / user profiling to attempt to fuzzy guess your intended results.

gabriel346• 12 years ago

not sure what are you talking about. Google results for me are as follow:

1. medium.com/collections

2. medium.com/top100/may-2013 (what I would be looking for except it's from last year)

3. an article with the title "Top Medium Collections everybody should follow"

4. images (why here?) of... purses and drawer handles?(wtf? why is this here?)

5. List of Medium collections | Niccolò Brogi

At the side some advertising for something that looks like bird cages or outdoor lamp protectors from Google Shops and "Tops at Macy's‎"

DDG's:

1.Medium Top 100 for March 2014 (much more recent than googles and at 1st position)

gabriel346• 12 years ago

To be honest DDG's other results were pretty much garbage for this query, but in the end of the day it brought me a much more relevant page in it's number 1 spot without tracking me.

Maybe you trained google well. I have not used it much in ages

a3n• 12 years ago

Very pretty. And thank you for not using infinite scroll.

Doctor_Fegg2• 12 years ago

Looks great!

Your new maps need to have an on-map credit to OpenStreetMap, as that's where the map data comes from, and OSM's licence requires attribution. osm.org/copyright explains how.

aroman• 12 years ago

It does. Click the "i" button: Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA

Doctor_Fegg2• 12 years ago

That's not on-map, that's hidden behind a click. osm.org/copyright makes it very clear that the attribution needs to be on-map. You don't see Google permitting people to hide their brand away like that!

glennon• 12 years ago

Doctor_Fegg makes a good point. The OSM Legal FAQ states: "For a browsable electronic map (e.g. embedded in a web page or mobile phone application), the credit should appear in the corner of the map, as commonly seen with map APIs/libraries such as Google Maps." Link: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#3a._I_would_lik...

dalek2point3• 12 years ago

I agree -- the maps look great. https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=restaurants+in+boston.

There might be some complaints/confusion about attribution from the OSM community, but overall really happy to see a major search engine use OSM maps!

ancarda5• 12 years ago

If you are using DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons, I strongly suggest you use https://startpage.com/ instead.

DuckDuckGo isn't much better than Google; both of them hijack your links. This gives an opportunity to track what you click on. If you watch carefully your links go to "r.duckduckgo.com" -- this page also doesn't use SSL. For example:

http://r.duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikip...

StartPage doesn't hijack links, it (optionally) uses POST and you never send a referer header so traffic looks organic.

gabriel346• 12 years ago

I don't see it; links on ddg are always direct to me; perhaps it's only for advertising links or something like anonym.to to hide some referer you'd send otherwise. What browser are you using?

ancarda5• 12 years ago

I'm using Firefox. I see a lot of r.duckduckgo.com entries in my history.

Edit: I can't replicate in Chrome or Safari but if I change my user-agent in Safari, it begins hijacking my URLs. The JavaScript is obfuscated so it's hard to tell if it's actually checking for Firefox or not. The function it calls is DDG.get_http_redirect

lucb1e• 12 years ago

StartPage doesn't hijack links, it (optionally) uses POST and you never send a referer header so traffic looks organic

... and looks like MSN Search results from 2006. Not just ugly and cluttered, which I don't mind too much, but dysfunctional too: no keyboard navigation between results nor editing the search query without using the mouse to focus the box. That is an immediate no-go for me.

ancarda5• 12 years ago

I don't like the design either, it's definitely one of DuckDuckGo's strengths, especially the new redesign. It's very nice.

deno• 12 years ago

You can make it look like this: https://i.imgur.com/jMucQvl.png

I‘m not entirely satisfied with startpage either though. What we really need is a local search proxy that goes via Google/Bing however you like, e.g. 1) using clearnet without cookies and cleaning up links (Google, Startpage, Bing) 2) via Tor automatically falling back if you get captcha (with option to do the captcha if you don’t like results) 3) Like 1) except via some VPN/Proxy

The results from each source (or multiple) could be normalized and the local app can offer any kind of interface you like.

I’ll write it at some point, but if anyone wants to steal that idea — please do.

weavejester3• 12 years ago

r.duckduckgo.com is actually there for privacy, to remove HTTP referers. See: https://duck.co/help/results/rduckduckgocom

ancarda5• 12 years ago

If you search using POST, that isn't a problem. Also, referer headers aren't sent to unencrypted links so if https://duckduckgo.com sent me to http://example.com they would not see where I came from.

Those two combined offer better privacy as no website can know what you were searching for and only secure websites know you came from DuckDuckGo. This setup doesn't give DuckDuckGo a chance to track what I'm clicking on.

TheLoneWolfling• 12 years ago

So: feedback.

The contrast is too low. It is hard to read on my (relatively bad) laptop screen.

Popins only when your mouse is over something are frustrating. My mouse is not tied to my eyes! In particular, if you're scrolling with your mouse in the center of the screen, the pop-in happens a moment after you stop scrolling, which is distracting. Also, I don't like hiding information by default in general.

Additionally: there is no way to view the full URL for long URLs - they expand, but only to a point.

The top header staying put is bad from a screen real estate POV. I've got a widescreen screen, and as such I'm cramped for vertical space but horizontal space is ample.

Finally: having the right arrow to the left of the domain to search the domain, and the popin on the right saying "more from <x>" seems redundant.

Splendor• 12 years ago

Chrome 34 on Windows 7. Can't read this bubble when it's on the first result: https://i.imgur.com/SrplpW4.png

plainOldText• 12 years ago

I really like the simplicity of this version of DuckDuckGo. The only thing I'd change, is the color used for domains. I personally look at the domain (among other things) when I decide to click on a result, and having a more noticeable domain name would be extremely helpful allowing me to quickly make a decision about which results are worthy.

Just my personal thoughts.

antris3• 12 years ago

Based in US, the line "The search engine that doesn't track you" means nothing.

canadaj• 12 years ago

Yes it does? The search engine won't track you, but that doesn't stop your ISP or anyone else along the chain.

antris3• 12 years ago

I mean that the guarantee from an US-based company that they won't track you is meaningless, because they can be ordered in secret court to hand over all their information with a gag order.

After that the only way for us to know would be a whistleblower. And even then we would only know that we are unsafe, not that we are safe.

JunkDNA• 12 years ago

Please don't keep it to yourself! What is this privacy-protecting search engine that you've been using that is immune to US or other intelligence agencies' snooping?

antris3• 12 years ago

Who said there is one?

gabriel346• 12 years ago

If they snoop your logs, but you have no information on your users then they will get nothing. If they can snoop your traffic live than pretty much yes, anything US based is vulnerable, but at least my information is not being sold and traded between private companies.

nawitus• 12 years ago

In addition, is this search engine proprietary?

weavejester3• 12 years ago

Not every company in the US is actively colluding with the government. Assuming DDG is telling the truth about not keeping any logs, then its service should be no less secure than if it were situated in any other country.

bhartzer• 12 years ago

One of the problem I see is that it appears that this version is that there is too much emphasis on keyword rich domain names. On one search query that I did just now, 14 of the top 20 search results for that had the keyword in the domain name.

A similar search (different city + keyword search), different city but same keywords as above, reveals 15 with the keyword out of 20 search results.

BorisMelnik• 12 years ago

what a clean look. love the fact that you have incorporated search features such as the carousel and video previews. I really like duck duck go as a search engine. I think one of the main reasons I have not fully adopted it is email/gmail and other Google offerings.

all in all the fact that privacy is on the side of the user is so key for me. I hate having a copy of everything I Google get stored somewhere, even in private mode.

fsck--off2• 12 years ago

I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine and have had a positive experience using it.

This redesign incorporates two of the worst design trends today: very low contrast text and gratuitously, obnoxiously large fixed headers.

I dislike fixed headers on any non-phone/tablet UI because almost all laptop and desktop screens are widescreen. Fixed position elements on the sides of the screen make much more sense, although poor implementations are very unpleasant and can create a jarring parallax effect. Unfortunately, fixed elements on the sides are soooo MySpace and have fallen out fashion, and many sites waste most of the space on the sides. The header in the redesign in obscenely large and the new page shows me less results at a time.

I have young and healthy eyes with 20/20 vision. Even so, when I use my laptop for coding and reading text, I turn the brightness down because it is easier on my eyes and does not give me headaches. I believe that the best practice is to make text #000 on a white background or very light background (like news.yc does), and to let users adjust the brightness of their display if this is uncomfortable. There have been assertions by that lighter text with white is better (and unfortunately this is the latest and laziest design trend), but I have seen no formal evidence of this and believe that this is mostly a combination of overbright display screens and poor text rendering by OSes and browsers. If you turn the brightness of your screen down, you solve the "too much contrast" problem (if it ever truly existed) and can tell when any text isn't #000. For me, DuckDuckgo's current snippet display color is to light at #333, and ridiculous at #595959. If I set the brightness of my laptop to the maximum setting, the snippet text is more tolerable but still uncomfortable.

I dislike the neo-flat, iOS-like buttons, but they don't really make the site any harder to use. I find that neo-flat buttons are almost have an underlying hypocrisy. The idea behind the flat painting movement is that you can discern what was called "optical depth" without using traditional perspective to mimic the depth you see with stereoscopic vision. The neo-flat movement is based on the idea that you don't need to underline hyperlinks or add perspective based shadows and gradients to distinguish what a button is because you can just use colors alone or make everything a link. If this were really true, then you wouldn't need to make the neo-flat buttons change colors when you mouse over them, because it should be obvious that they are links. You can see similar hypocrisy in Google's A/B testing of non-centered labels in certain neo-flat buttons on their websites (especially YouTube).

Edit: I rewrote the first sentence of the third paragraph to make it more clear.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

I agree with what you say in general, but the new DDG page looks pretty good to me, because all of that stuff seems to be done purposefully, to put the focus on the search bar, and not let your eyes stray to other places on the page too much, every single time you do a search. I think all the other stuff is supposed to fade into the background.

geuis• 12 years ago

I'm having trouble parsing this part of your comment:

"I dislike fixed headers for any interface that isn't for a phone or tablet because almost all laptop and desktop screens are widescreen."

Are you saying that only fixed headers only work on mobile interfaces and they shouldn't be used on desktop? If so, I disagree with you. Fixed headers, if they are used at all, should only be used on desktop. There's simply not enough screen real estate on mobile. DDG actually does a nice job with this and doesn't use the fixed nav on mobile. Also, I don't see how desktop widescreen has anything to do with a fixed nav header.

If you are saying that fixed headers only belong on desktop/laptop, then I agree with you.

dredmorbius6• 12 years ago

I agree with both you and GP.

Fixed headers should be banned on all devices.

They're a crutch, an annoyance, steal real estate, make me dislike your site, and frequently (if I cannot remove them by some means) will encourage me to use an alternate site.

For content-heavy sites, these and similar annoyances send me straight to Readability via bookmarklet or plugin.

lnanek22• 12 years ago

he's probably saying widescreens have less vertical room, so a fixed header then makes it even less. so a fixed header is more of a problem on them. thought experiment: if you had a 20" wide screen that was only 10" tall, you'd hate anything that took up your vertical space, wouldn't you?

dubcanada• 12 years ago

No matter what DDG does there is no way to make it 100% perfect for everyone.

I find the contrast to be perfectly fine. But someone with a different monitor can see completely different colours/contrast.

The only thing I can see is maybe slightly making it darker wouldn't hurt anything.

curiouscats2• 12 years ago

True, but a good use of the flexibility computers allow for people adjusting settings allows for a great deal of happiness.

To the extent I still use Google (various products not just search) one thing is constantly happening is that setting options are removed. I find links showing me how to fix what Google has broken and then the settings I can use to do so have seemingly been completely removed by Google :-( This continuing practice has encouraged me to move more and more away from Google. DDG is my default, though still use Google search a fair amount when DDG doesn't give great results or I want to filter by date.

intractable• 12 years ago

I find the contrast to be perfectly fine.

Which is why you chose to write your comment in a low contrast colour.

yk_42• 12 years ago

You can actually go into the settings and change most of the colors and even the behaviour of the header (fixed/static/off).

nagisa• 12 years ago

With a well calibrated display and a pair of good eyes I went through all 65 levels of brightness (I usually use 40% or so) my laptop has available whilst looking at ¹. All parts of page were very readable at all levels other than no backlight and two levels above no backlight.

¹: https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=hello+world

dchuk2• 12 years ago

A practical application for fixed headers is retaining access to search fields on pages with infinite scrolling (which is why they're doing it here). Otherwise, you might be ten pages deep and then have to scroll all the back up to search again. With this, search is accessible at all times.

claudius3• 12 years ago

The ‘search field’ is called an address bar combined with predefined search engines in my browser and accessible at all times using C-x f d without fiddling around with site-defined search entry fields. Oh, and it’s much smaller and takes up space anyhow…

stonogo3• 12 years ago

Things like this are why, on computers with full keyboards, the 'home' key scrolls to the top of the page.

dredmorbius6• 12 years ago

That's why God gave us a "Home" key.

Though Steve, who thought he was God, took it away from some of You.

yegg11• 12 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! Our current version also has a fixed header, and that can be turned off in the settings, which we plan to make work in this next version as well.

Noted on contrast. We will look into it more -- that's exactly the kind of feedback we were hoping to get.

oneplusone• 12 years ago

The links should also be blue so they pop out more. Makes it easier to scan over the results.

lisper• 12 years ago

+1 on the low contrast comment. It's all the rage nowadays, but this one of those trends that I think people will look back on in a few years and say, "How did anyone ever think that was a good idea?"

fsck--off2• 12 years ago

Thanks for listening!

I actually don't mind the fixed header on the current version because it is much smaller and less obtrusive than the header on the redesign. I dislike fixed headers on news sites like the New York Times, because I want as much vertical space as possible to read the article. On a search engine, there is no issue of losing context, so a tastefully constructed fixed header is acceptable.

I understand why you wanted to add a second toolbar for more options and am not suggesting that you removed completely remove fixed headers for the default landing page. I just think that the second toolbar could easily fit on the same line as the search bar.

spoiler• 12 years ago

In regards to the contrast comment, this might be a very useful tool to help you calibrate: http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/

batuhanicoz• 12 years ago

I think showing only tabs[0] with the fixed header would be better? I'm not sure which part of the header is used more often though. You guys must keep some stats on the usage patterns.

And one more suggestion about this: When I click on the up arrow, focusing on the search bar would be nice. But that may be just me.

[0] Like this: http://cl.ly/VMql

teaneedz3• 12 years ago

I'm in the camp that actually likes the new look. It conveys a modern minimalist view while the extras just get out of your way.

I've been mostly against flat design for a number of reasons but IMO, you've achieved a great design. I really like the minimalism of the hamburger button. Again, everything just gets out of your way.

Perhaps enlarging the font-size of the search result snippets might help with the contrast complaints - personally, I like your use of the grays. Again, it conveys a modern design.

I really hope that there will be an updated iOS app soon too :)

chasingtheflow• 12 years ago

Personally, I'm okay with the contrast side of things. But I do prefer it when the main content of the page is centered as opposed to left-aligned.

reledi• 12 years ago

Regarding the contrast, this is worth a read: http://contrastrebellion.com

CallYouOut2• 12 years ago

Totally agree with the parent. I'd also love it if it took advantage of more than 25% of the width of my 30" desktop display.

And: thanks for listening to your users!

bachmeier2• 12 years ago

I use DDG for most searches. The new site looks better but that's not helpful if I can't read it. I'm not 22 with good eyesight. At a minimum, there has to be a button available to fix the contrast issue.

j4kp072• 12 years ago

FWIW...and no disrespect meant, but I hope DDG does not follow this advice. Firstly, this is a developer. So he/she is not the key demographic you are targeting. Developers and the like don't understand that John Doe has no idea what "contrast" is or which button turns it down/up. Please note all of the references to "me" and "my" and his perfect color-correct 20/20 vision in his feedback.

malnourish• 12 years ago

Few things. I like the redesign in a broad, sweeping sense but: 1) Themes don't work (at least, they don't look good. I know this is pre-release and will be fixed) 2) Fixed header is too large and should be smaller by default (as well as toggle-able in settings) 3) The color change and underline for links are jarring on mouse-over.

Keep up the great work!

zobzu• 12 years ago

i agree on contrast other than that i like it better than the old design

avree• 12 years ago

I love this design—it convinced me to finally switch from Google to DuckDuckGo as my default search provider.

init0• 12 years ago

class="result__check" mouseover tooltip isn't visible for the first link.

otisfunkmeyer• 12 years ago

Wow after reading that comment I was expecting something so.... Bad. Instead, I saw something so.... Good. To me. I'm surprised to hear someone disliked it so much actually. C'est la vie.

patrickas• 12 years ago

There is a typo in the about page, under "2013 Open-Source Donations", "Crytocat" should be "Cryptocat".

ctolsen• 12 years ago

I agree with the people saying the new look is quite good, but it does need a couple of changes.

Contrast has been mentioned, it's better on your "cards" (top toolbar that appears on some searches) than on the general results. Other than that, I'm not sure your choice of font is very good. It's not quite crisp enough to easily scan and read lots of text at once. I tried switching to Helvetica Neue instead of Proxima and things instantly looked more readable.

Overall a good step in the right direction though.

tripzilch• 12 years ago

I didn't notice the fixed version in the old look, probably because it's not as tall.

In the new version, it's taller, and makes it so I can only see 4 results at a time on my 1366x768 netbook. Makes me want to reach for my "fixedfixer" bookmarklet (sets all position:fixed styles to static), which is not really something I want to do every time I use my search engine. Still, that's more convenient than having to change a setting every time I clear my cookies.

Otherwise, I do like the clean and airy/breathing space in the new look.

Just be mindful of vertical screen estate, it's one of the most precious things to squander, and from a usability point of view, the only thing you can really argue that might need to be there is just the search box.

Personally, what I think is a better solution for that, is one of the older Google layouts, which had a search box at the bottom of a result page as well as at the top. Then you could just scan the first page of results and when you got to the bottom you probably had some ideas as how to refine the query, and there it was, ready for the next search! :)

billrobertson42• 12 years ago

I have a huge issue with low contrast text due to my eyes. Many sites I will simply not spend time on.

isaacaggrey• 12 years ago

Great work, yegg! I like the direction this is headed. Perhaps for the header, it can collapse/hide the row with "Meanings | Images | Videos | Products" under the search bar until you scroll back to the top to make it a bit less huge? Perhaps you could even shrink it a bit to the height of the bar when it collapses as well.

scrabble• 12 years ago

I agree with most of that.

I also dislike that the search results do not really have anything differentiating their different sections as opposed to the current results where it's easy to see title, description, and url at a glance. (To be clear, I don't think change isn't possible or that things should stay exactly the same, just that some kind of differentiating factor would be extremely helpful.)

And I also use DDG as my primary search engine. Integrating it into Firefox and only using g! when my results are poor.

Alphasite_• 12 years ago

Well you can't really assume people have anything setup properly, so i can understand why they're doing it.

yconst• 12 years ago

Your last argument, I find it irrelevant. Buttons and links etc. change colours not because of their inability to indicate their function, but to enhance the interactive experience. In most cases you get exactly the same effect with so-called "skeyomorphic" elements, no difference at all. The whole discussion has nothing to do with your "underlined links" argument.

The flat look has received a lot of criticism in the past couple years, but to be completely honest, in the many arguments I've heard against it, I couldn't really find one that can really stand it's ground if I may say so. On the contrary, I find a lot of merit in the new principles that are being embraced trough this approach, such as e.g. the emphasis on interaction to distinguish elements, instead of artificially imposed "symbolisms" (whether this is an underline, or a button-shaped, well, button :) ). This gives me a hint that, as a design community, we have a more mature approach to designing for those unearthly things we call "devices" than we did a few years back :)

crisnoble2• 12 years ago

I can see just as many results, if not more, in the new redesign on an initial search. see here: http://i.imgur.com/nBPQ01e.png?1?3589

As you scroll down you see about 50px less vertically devoted to results, a tradeoff easily outweighed by the top suggestion toggle drawer thingy awesomeness.

pizzashark• 12 years ago

I agree with most of what you said, but I personally prefer lighter text on a white background to black on white. It looks cleaner when the text is lighter.

gkoz• 12 years ago

I concur: low-contrast sites make reading extremely uncomfortable and gratuitous mouseover color changes make for a bad experience. Please don't! The fixed header feels like a massive waste of space for me too, especially if I zoom in to increase the uncomfortably small font.

rml• 12 years ago

I also use DDG as my primary, but I prefer the `lite` interface: https://duckduckgo.com/lite

Spittie• 12 years ago

I'm a fan of https://duckduckgo.com/html/ , not completely bare-bone yet fast to load.

But the new interface is nice.

sdegutis• 12 years ago

I disagree, the new redesign is beautiful!!

edwinyzh• 12 years ago

Hater of large-fixed-headers here! Another worse example is Gmail.

unlimit• 12 years ago

Glad that you brought up the fixed header thing. It totally messes up the page down/page up thing.

nine_k2• 12 years ago

You seem to completely miss the new features.

On the search page, click the hamburger icon on the top right.

There you can adjust the fonts (to some extent), colors, the position of the header (make it scrolling again), and many more things. All of this is impossible with old DDG, or Google, or Bing, or Yandex, etc.

I wish people that have time to write 3 long paragraphs of complaints actually have tried what they are complaining about. Or, if they have, made it clear that they complain about the defaults.

keletappi• 12 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't even noticed the hamburger button. On a widescreen monitor the button is way too far from actual content. It really needs to be closer to the content of the page.

protester• 12 years ago

Except that the huge header covers the settings and only a few are available to me, and I can't see the tabs.

My ideal defaults: Header should be shorter. Contrast should be higher. The O-click box should be hidden and only its tabs should be visible. It should use as much horizontal space as possible (wonder if they plan to add something on the right side). A little bit less spacing between results would be great.

Even though they seem to be nice people, I don't trust them, and I don't believe that the url they are showing is the location where I will go if I click on the link (I don't trust the status bar either), so they should remove that last line from the result and add the icon and the domain (that's ok) to the main title.

e_proxus• 12 years ago

It is interesting that browsers have had settings for years related to font sizes, like preventing fonts smaller than a designated minimum size, yet colors and contrasts are still completely up to the web site owner.

If you use Chrome, the Google Accessibility team has released an extension that can increase contrast / invert colors for better readability: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/high-contrast/djcf...

azinman2• 12 years ago

Disagree -- you're attacking the wrong cause of your issue. There are many aspects to text being readable than having extreme contrast with colors. As you even said, "white or light background." That already shows malleability. Font style (serif vs sans), line spacing, column width, header:content size ratios, etc matter. You're over simplifying the problem. Making the text #000 won't solve your problems and generally looks worse. When you buy a professional book they also aren't #000 on #fff -- that generally will look bad and amateur.

Design is an art and takes a lot of iteration of all those things I mentioned and more to obtain aesthetics and usability. Personally I find the new DDG hard to scan in part because I'm used to google, but also because there are different elements of the design I think to be poor choices:

1. The black text for header and content doesn't help anything pop. It needn't if everything else is setup correctly, but it isn't doing any favors. Instead the only color between listings is the favicon which makes it feel random.

2. The weighting of the header isn't sufficiently different from the body of the search, giving them less contrast relative to each other, and thus harder for my eyes to scan. If they had put the title in all upper case, chose a bold condense font, bigger font size, etc then there would be more contrast between the two.

3. The listings are variable length with not much white space between them, so that contributes to it being harder for my brain to chunk and reliably scan.

Those are just a few of the issues as I see it. A professional designer / typographer could help a lot more.

gabriel346• 12 years ago

Not a designer but it's my opinion that low contrast text has it's benefits beside looking good.

Sure, low contrast is very bad for walls of text such as the ones on this very site (when you "Ask HN" or "Show HN" something, but DDG's implementation directs my eyes toward the page title. If you are going to have a lot of info show on any one place, you'd better direct the viewer's attention.

I would keep the different contrast levels, but would do it differently.

Right now my there are several levels. My eyes are directed to page title and the words I searched for. Page title doesn't really help that much for most pages (unless I'm looking for something quite unspecific) and I already know the keywords I looked for. Right now I go to the keyword in a three line summary and have to find where does it fit; I begin reading from the middle, it's more exhausting and potentially slower

Page title is less important than the text surrounding the term I looked for and the domain name of the site. Bold that, not the keyword I already know; direct my eyes toward info I want.

FavIcon being the only colored element besides Dax stands out too much; put it left of the result like this:

            [title]
            [summary]
  [FavIcon] [summary]
            [summary]
            [url, mouseover complete url, link from this page]

On a next version:

I'd use my indexer to capture keywords for the result document. I would try to cluster the results based on that, so "man top" returns clusters of linux help and of clothing and the user selects what he meant, filtering out the noise.

I don't know how taxing that would be, but not every page has to be indexed this way. Even 10% of the index having these keywords would be statistically significant to build the clusters. The keywords from this index would be highlighted in the results. Search could be machine tailored in case the user decide to go deeper than the 10%, so as to return documents likely to belong to the cluster, but not processed into it.

opendomain• 12 years ago

I hate to say this, because I am a BIG fan of DuckDuckGo, but I think your ranking algorithm can be improved.

I collect domains for my open source project, OpenDomain. The sites do not actually have too much valuable content - just placeholders so people can find them.

I just checked, and quite a few of my domains are listed very highly on DDG. Not that I am complaining, but I think they are rated high just because the keywords are in the domains themselves.

For example, "NoSQL", "JSON", "Free TV", "liposculpture", "WebPlatform", and "Helpher" all scored top hits for my sites.

I am not asking for my sites to be removed specifically, but we should try to get better results - I have done NOTHING for SEO on these domains - just owned the keyword.

rk0567• 12 years ago

I've also observed that, .com, .net domains rank much higher (even if it's not any good) as compared to less popular extensions (.me, .co etc).

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

I'm not up to date on what kind of algorithm you're using, but last I checked you were still mostly relying on Bing, is that true? Are you guys working on your own search/indexing engine so you don't depend on any of the big guys that might eventually pull the rug from under you?

I guess what I'm saying is, if Microsoft were to deny you access to Bing tomorrow, would DDG still be a pretty good search engine, or would it fall apart?

shmerl• 12 years ago

Is it WIP? Default one still looks the way it was.

bluthru• 12 years ago

Please make the fixed header half as tall. Put "Images Video" to the side of the search box.

This is nitpicky, but I don't like how an entire result is a link with a hovered background color. I also don't like how additional content appears when hovered. Please don't trim the URL and hide it unless the result is being hovered on.

mfrommil2• 12 years ago

I really like the transition from normal search -> images & videos.

Wish there was a way to have news embedded in search results similar to google, though.

bsstoner• 12 years ago

Try adding 'news' to the query: https://next.duckduckgo.com/?q=amazon+news

marincounty• 12 years ago

I hope they destroy Google.

sjs3822• 12 years ago

Proxima Nova at 600 weight displays really weird on my work machine: http://i.imgur.com/O9GU0TG.png.

Is there a chance you might reconsider the font choice?

Looks great, if I force Helvetica.

yegg11• 12 years ago

Wow, that's strange! What are the machine/browser specs?

sdougbrown2• 12 years ago

Do you have Proxima Nova installed locally? The font stack does look for a locally installed version of the font first - it looks like it's applying the 900 font weight instead of 600.

sjs3822• 12 years ago

I did. Seems that I had the regular weight and black version only. Disabled the "black" and it is rendering better now.

Looks amazing, once I fixed that issue.

dpatrick86• 12 years ago

Please continue working on the non-aesthetic fundamentals.

I reported this query previously to you guys, and it appears nothing has happened. It concerns me because it's so nonsensical it erodes my trust in your results, and it has persisted like this for over a year at this point....

If you search "IGF-1" on DDG you get maybe 100 results. Now lets try the same search on Google, but with a handicap. Let's be even more strict and only show results that contain this keyword specifically in the title using "intitle:igf-1". You'll find 69,500 results (at the time of this posting).

boyter2• 12 years ago

Are they relevant though? How many results do you need? Also Google is wildly optimistic about the number of results. Try paging through and it might cap out at the same number.

boyter2• 12 years ago

I cannot edit my other post, but paging through Google gives 363 pages...

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=IGF-1#hl=en&q=IG...

Far less then the 5 million it claims to know about on the first page,

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=IGF-1#hl=en&q=IG...

mfrommil2• 12 years ago

Would be great if the settings menu expanded with hovering instead of a click (similar to the 3 buttons on the bottom). It's far enough to the side that accidental hovers could be avoided, while saving a click.

olq• 12 years ago

I think it looks great! Tried it in my kind of night mode: dimmed display, very orange f.lux setting and inverted colours, and it works good. I like the design a lot! Why not widening the results column in larger windows and thus fit more results vertically? Maybe really large site logos/icons would be cool.

ethana• 12 years ago

Off topic, but I still think the domain name is a few strokes too long for people.

edited: Oh hell no, duck.com redirects to google. That sucks.

duckie.com is parked, buy it?

dmunoz2• 12 years ago

There is ddg.gg already.

orangewarp• 12 years ago

It would be a classy move if Google gave duck.com to duckduckgo.

dorgo• 12 years ago

pls dont open new tabs if a search result is clicked with right mouse button. I use right mouse button for mouse-gestures. My browser dont permit to disable right-mouse-button-context-menu. If I click with the right mouse-button on a search result then a new tab is opened AND a context-menu is shown.

jhomhenvhisst2• 12 years ago

Search: åäö "Showing 35 Ã¥Ã¤Ã¶ Images"

Great.

cainetighe5• 12 years ago

Confirm fixed?

jhomhenvhisst2• 12 years ago

yes, nice!

dredmorbius6• 12 years ago

I've been using DDG intermittently for the past two years, and solidly (with fallbacks to other search engines) since June, 2013.

Overall the design looks decent. Remember: less is more.

I don't know if features were modified since fskc--off posted, but I'd agree strongly with both his primary concerns: ditch ALL fixed headers and footers, on ALL devices, and keep maximal contrast throughout the site. My eyes are no longer quite so young as they once were, and low contrast designs are bullshit. The "off-black on off-white" argument applies only to print materials, not online, where contrasts are inherently lower, and are worsened by increased ambient light.

I find the grey background on the focused search entry distracting. I've removed it. The outline is sufficient (if not excessive itself).

I find the font sizes in general too small. I prefer specifying fonts in points not pixels, and very, very strongly recommend that all text-oriented dimensions be either in ems or percentage of screen width. In general, don't size text elements if you can help it. I set an overall content width of between 45-50em for most sites, with a minimum 2em margin (and that's as a fallback). I apply my own CSS to many sites I visit, some 1000+ at present (yes, including HN, increasing contrast and font sizes being principle changes).

I notice the browser URL no longer reflects the present search. I dislike that change as I'll copy and paste search URLs fairly frequently. Please retain the previous behavior.

The search syntax icons on the RH side of the page underneath the "Spread DDG" link looked at first to me like social share link crap (another feature I strip from most sites). I'd suggest putting the "spread" link elsewhere and more clearly differentiating it from the actual search tools.

Of features missing on DDG which force me back to other sites, the lack of time-bounded search is probably the biggest (other than simply lacking expected search results). I've been impressed by the integration of OpenStreetMap results and would like to see similar type development, as well as your use of Wikipedia and similar informational sources in results.

Overall: fairly subtle changes, and gripes notwithstanding, not bad. That's actually high praise ;-)

Also: I'd very much like to thank you for actually previewing the design in advance of releasing it. While online services make drastic changes possible, they're not always welcome, and I feel far too many sites make the egregious error of dropping a new design on users with no warning.

For the "next.duckduckgo.com" site, I've got the following CSS tweaks presently applied. All but the last are legacy, some may no longer be strictly necessary:

    #header_wrapper {
        position: static;
    }

    #header_wrapper #header #header_content_wrapper #header_content #header_button_wrapper #header_button #header_button_menu_wrapper #header_button_menu {
        z-index: 2;
    }

    #search_form {
        font-size: 15pt;
    }

    .bang_suggestion:hover {
        background-color: rgb(228,246, 255);
    }

    .bangwrap {
        z-index: 2;
    }

    .snippet {
        font-size: 14pt;
    }

    p, body p, li, body li, dt, body dt, dd, body dl {
        font-size: 15pt;
    }

    .web-result:hover {
        background: none;
        background-color: inherit;
    }

sdougbrown2• 12 years ago

I think you'll probably want to remove those font-size adjustments and re-assess afterwards. You'll find that the majority of the redesign is indeed sized with ems, including all text sizes. You'll also want to adjust #header_wrapper to position:absolute if you deice that you're not going to use the settings to disable the fixed header behaviour - setting static without adjusting the settings will be unpleasant. To be safe, in case you want to play with the header settings later, you probably want to actually make that selector `.set-header--fixed .header-wrap { position: absolute' }`

dredmorbius6• 12 years ago

I'll re-review. The font sizes I suspect I'll keep. They're pretty standard across most sites I use, though for text-heavy ones that are actually document-based, I'll even bump them up further -- 17-18pt for true long-form reads.

Static for header hasn't been an issue for me. Headers that are sufficiently annoying just get iced ;-)

Aaronneyer• 12 years ago

Is there any chance in functionality with the new version or is it just the prettier search page?

lnanek22• 12 years ago

I don't really like the "doesn't track you part." How is it going to give as good results if it doesn't track people? Clicks is the best way to tell which results are good, and my clicks especially.

whatts• 12 years ago

You can still count clicks without associating it with the user who clicked. Anyway, the "doesn't track you" part is the whole point of DDG. If you don't like/need that, you can simply use Google.

stonogo3• 12 years ago

Please don't apply any of these changes to the html version. It's my favorite websearch interface.

I would also like an option to disable r.duckduckgo.com redirects.

claudius3• 12 years ago

Passing kd=-1 in the URL disables redirects for me.

stonogo3• 12 years ago

thanks!

systemizer• 12 years ago

I don't understand how a service can be both secure and centralized. You'd have to give 100% of your trust to a single entity. I'm not pointing fingers, but DDG is a good example of this situation.

If you want greater security, you have to allocate trust amongst many entities. This is a practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance problem (http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16444-practical-byzantine-fault... ).

My current trust model is primarily made up of my friends and family; not a third party organization online, regardless of how they market it. If I put my trust in them, my security would only be compromised if ((N-1)/3) worked together. (see http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824-2012/papers/castro-practical...) Wouldn't my activity be more secure if it was built upon that?

I'm not proposing any implementations; just food for thought.

mihok• 12 years ago

I used to use DDG as my primary search provider for half a year, was unhappy with the user experience/search results but after a couple preliminary searches, everything is looking up! Well done DDG, really, really stoked for you guys to get better. (And it looks like you definatly are!)

YoukaiCountry• 12 years ago

One thing that is bothering me is the filling in of search queries when you mouse over them. One wrong move with the mouse if you have a query partially typed in, and you have to backspace all of the automatically filled in stuff. Other than that, I think it's pretty nice.

monotypical• 12 years ago

Just wanted to say, had heard a lot about ddg, but I never really gave it a fair shot until now, and it's awesome, before you even get to the privacy stuff!. Thanks.

peutichat• 12 years ago

If you're into alternative search engines that don't track you, You should try psykoo: http://www.psykoo.com

dewey• 12 years ago

- So they are not tracking me, but everyone else is reading my search queries because there's no https support.

- It's really slow

- It's ugly

No thanks.

claudius3• 12 years ago

There doesn’t really seem to be any improvement over the old page and the only thing that annoys me with the old page (used with kj=b2&kl=wt-wt&ko=f&kp=-1&kx=b) is the fact that instant answers are loaded not immediately. That is, if I click on the first link before WolframAlpha pops up with something more-or-less helpful, I sometimes accidentally click on that area.

yahelc• 12 years ago

Anyone know how DDG is detecting this:

Your browser indicates if you've visited this link.

I was under the impression that browsers try to block sites from being able to detect this. Traditionally, the hack has been with the :visited pseudo-class, but not sure if there's more at play here.

Kind of a weird feature for a search engine whose tagline is "The search engine that doesn't track you."

lojack• 12 years ago

It appears to use the :visited pseudo-class. You'll notice if you click that area it'll link to the page.

zephyz• 12 years ago

If I disable meanings in the settings I see video and picture results. Is that the intended behaviour?

mryingster• 12 years ago

Thank you for adding image search! That's about the only thing I really rely on Google for. Giving it its own dedicated full page rather than just a section would be very welcomed as well.

Two other things. Others have mentioned having the links always blue, not just when rolling over. I would like this as well to make it a little quicker/more evident where the physical link is.

Secondly, I like the link to see more results from whichever domain, however I am wondering if we can also have a "hide results from whatever domain" so we can hide useless spammy domains that may show up in our results. This is a huge problem on Google, though I haven't noticed it as badly on DDG.

At any rate, I love DDG! Thanks for the hard work!

brokenparser• 12 years ago

I love Duck and the focus on privacy it has, but lately I've been using searx and had more success with it than ddg given the same queries. You can find running instances here: https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances

pi-squared• 12 years ago

Don't center and add the fixed horizontal limit for images when there is an instant answer.

atmosx• 12 years ago

I would love to use DDG as my default search engine but anything other than Google is extremely poor when it comes to the non-English side of the WWW. Google was way better at sorting Greek web-pages last time I checked. I'll give DDG another try though, might turned better...

ThePhysicist• 12 years ago

Of course the first thing I did was a vanity search of my name and I have to say I'm really impressed (and a bit shocked) by the quality of the results:

All my social media profiles, all my websites, every project I contributed to, even websites where people credited me for my work when they used it in their own projects, all neatly sorted and with great context information. Definitely on par, if not better, than Google and visually much easier to digest. Amazing job!

davidcelis• 12 years ago

Wish I could say the same :\. The top result for "David Celis" is a LinkedIn directory of people with my name. The first result that's actually me is my Twitter account, at number 3. My actual homepage, http://davidcel.is/, doesn't even appear on the first page. Guess I need to become more important?

rcamera• 12 years ago

Having been using DDG as my primary search engine for pretty much 6 years now, I really disliked the new redesign.

As mentioned in another comment, the contrast is really bad, I find it hard to read and focus on a given result. This is much worse when using f.lux.

I also disliked the left-align on everything, I rather have it centered as it currently is. When using big widescreen monitors there is a lot of whitespace in the middle of the screen and the results show up all the way to the lower left corner... It is pretty uncomfortable to look all the way there and this makes it harder on the contrast part too because there is so much bright light already coming from the background and the font color is a light greyish. This is specially worse in multi-monitor setups.

The image and video search tabs are great, and I really like the fact they replace zero-click results when you click on them, but I wouldn't leave them in the fixed header, there is just no need for them to be there. This would reduce the size of the fixed header and make it even better.

When scrolling results using j and k, the greyish background it adds to each result makes the contrast even worse. I remember when they were yellowish, they were better back then, imo. But current design works too. I also miss the current border around it, it makes it much easier for you to find yourself if you are switching tabs and going back to the results page. I haven't measured, but the font also seems a couple pixels smaller, is it?

It is also harder to distinguish between results. It all seems like a blob of text, hard to skim through results looking just at the title. In the current design this is fantastically easy, given titles are blue. I only read stuff below the title if the title is of interest. In the new design this is much harder to do, there is not enough contrast between the title and the text under it. Keep it blue, there is absolutely no reason to change this.

yaddayadda• 12 years ago

All of what @ rcamera said.

I really like the current visuals and layout much better than the beta, particularly the contrast and blue links. I also like the favicon to the left of the page title in results.

I actually like the instant suggestions. And I like the "Images" and "Video" buttons at the top, HOWEVER I'm a massive !bang! fan, and will differ to !i and !v. Although I would prefer that both methods go to a generic images and video searches (as opposed to Google Images and YouTube). ALSO, for me when I roll over a link I want to see the url in the bottom of my browser (forgetting what Firefox calls this) and I'm not getting it with the new layouts Video suggestions.

belovedeagle• 12 years ago

+1 on the blue links. Sure, on most websites blue links might look like the 1990s are calling, but on a search engine with a list of results, there has to be /something/ to set apart each result from its neighbors. I also like the brownish urls on the current layout, just because it also serves to set apart each result.

Unfortunately, in terms of readability, the new layout is a major step backwards.

gk1• 12 years ago

I'm getting a weird bug that's making the results page un-usable:

When I move my cursor up and down in the results area, the listings start scrambling around like crazy. I can't even tell if they're being scrolled through or if they're just randomly changing.

I am on a Lenovo Yoga 13 (which is an ultrabook with a touchscreen) using Chrome 34.0.1847.131 m on Windows. I suspect DDG thinks I'm on a mobile device and then interprets cursor movements as finger swiping.

Edit: Yep, seems to think I'm on a mobile device. Menu is hidden behind a menu icon, but I can't get it to open with a mouseclick--only with a tap on the screen. The site is completely unusable for anyone with a Windows 8 laptop (ie, laptops with touchscreens), unless they're using it exclusively as a tablet.

neil_s• 12 years ago

The design is nice, but I still don't find the results relevant (from the small sample size that I tested). For example, I searched for 'alternatives to minimum wage' because of a recent debate, and got Yahoo Answers as the first result, with a bunch of unknown sites after. On the other hand, Google returned the Washington Post, Bloomberg View and other credible organisations.

The design is certainly much nicer on the eyes, without the blue links and with the little 'read' tick marks, but perhaps the focus should be on better search algorithms first?

curiouscats2• 12 years ago

The one box can be nice but takes up too much room so I have it set to off. It would be better if you gave me a simple click to view one box (I can often guess the small number of cases where viewing it would be useful - such as thinking a map will show up or in the case I wanted the wiki summary).

Off the top of my head just having a link after the products link that said 0-click box (or something) if it was settings had it off would be useful.

rockdiesel• 12 years ago

Why does DDG display rover.ebay.com links in search results?

From my understanding rover.ebay.com is used for ebay affiliate links. Is this one way DDG makes money? If not, why would they display rover.ebay.com links in search results over traditional ebay links?

EDIT: Looks like I answered my own question. They generate revenue through affiliate links.

For anyone else curious, here's the link - https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates

ErikRogneby• 12 years ago

I like it. my one nitpick:

On Mobile, if you do "show more meaning" there is no undo of that action. I thought the X might collapse down to the preview but it removed it altogether.

Buonaparte• 12 years ago

I just want to say that I love DuckDuckGo. I feel like the majority of search results I get from Google and Bing these days are just advertising one thing or another. DuckDuckGo is a much better experience.

nfriedly2• 12 years ago

Shoot! I'll be able to retire http://ddgg.nfriedly.com soon!

nfriedly2• 12 years ago

Doh! That was supposed to say "Whoot!" but my phone autocorrected it and I didn't notice until after the edit timer was up.

But to clarify, I'm happy DDG is incorporation this feature :)

im3w1l• 12 years ago

If I may make a feature request: I would like some way to search that preserves symbols in the query. For instance I would like to be able to search for Lab* and not get results for L-A-B, L.A.B etc.

Ryel• 12 years ago

I think the new look is awesome but I'd still use DDG either way.

ugexe2• 12 years ago

Something that has bothered me in the old version as well as this version is the wiki-summary/product/images/videos header. Often times (especially when im using a VPN) the search results load before whatever needs to be loaded in the header, so I will go to click a result and then the header expands into my click. This means I go to a page I did not intend. It needs to be a fixed size or its size needs to be determined before listing search results.

MrGando• 12 years ago

I totally hate that Header too.

nemoniac• 12 years ago

I also use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine and have had very positive experience using it.

But the single worst thing about ddg is that it's still not possible to deactivate the "did you mean?" functionality. I rarely make typing errors so I spend most keystrokes on ddg putting quotes around things that I did mean.

twodayslate• 12 years ago

The frontpage is a lot more pleasing to the eye, however, the search results are much more readable on the current layout. The text is not very crisp under Chrome on my Windows 8.1 machine.

yetfeo2• 12 years ago

One thing that would be nice to fix in the new interface:

If I use the DDG TOR hidden service, 3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion, do a search and click on a search result the link goes via a DDG redirect from r.duckduckgo.com. This should be using the hidden service domain, not the duckduckgo.com domain. As it is the redirect goes over a tor exit node rather than directly via the hidden service.

NamTaf• 12 years ago

Please make sure the hamburger menu button on the right and the close X button inside the menu are centred (edit: with respect to one another) - currently, the close button shifts down and left from the position of the hamburger button. Keeping it in the one spot is one of those polish things that instantly stands out to me.

timgws• 12 years ago

The one thing that kills be about DDG is that when I search for "who is the prime minister of australia" it get's nearly everything wrong.

Google gives me a result of a name ("Tony Abbott"), while DDG starts giving me an article from Wikipedia describing the role (this one is forgivable...)

DDG Images shows the first six images as being previous prime ministers.

http://imgur.com/a/wWgXD

dieg0• 12 years ago

Nice redesign, as a designer, developer and user: I like

I don't like the way that video search is actually Youtube search (to use 'video' is misleading, sad face). And I imagine when it comes to images is the same.

DuckDuckGo, if you would please add other media sources... Google used to do this, now it's all about keeping the user inside Google’s ecosystem.

jagtalon• 12 years ago

We're actually planning on adding more video sources in the future. Stay tuned!

cainetighe5• 12 years ago

We originally prototyped videos with several providers including Vimeo, YouTube, and DailyMotion. Sadly there was an immediate (and difficult) safe search problem and we decided to table re-enabling the others until after we got some feedback about how it worked.

Matt_Cutts2• 12 years ago

Hey Gabriel, congrats on the new launch! The new autocomplete -as-you-type feature made me curious: you mentioned that you don't associate queries with IP addresses, but does DDG save queries?

hjalle• 12 years ago

Looks like an already asked question:

  To be clear, we still don't collect or share personal           
  information and auto-suggest does not impact that at all.
  I   appreciate it may make you and others uncomfortable 
  and we're sensitive to that, but it is not a change in 
  terms of privacy. We simply do not associate queries with 
  personal information (e.g. IP addresses) and in fact    
  don't store any of it at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700960

Matt_Cutts2• 12 years ago

I saw that, but it was very delicately worded. For example, if Gabe doesn't consider the search query to be personal information, then his answer would allow DDG to save/store search queries. That's why I asked for clarification.

jbail• 12 years ago

The Related Topics algorithm needs a lot work.

I search for "Denver" and the top related topic is "Gang Activity in Denver." Really?

I search for "Chicago" and the entire related topics list is places on the historic register in Chicago. Really? The whole list?

I'd turn this off until you make it work better. It grabs a lot of attention and degrades the rest of the experience. My first impression is that if DDG gets that part so wrong, what else are they getting wrong with the search results? Cruel, perhaps, but that's my impression.

The new interface is nice and fast otherwise.

mring33621• 12 years ago

Neither button in the "Learn More" dialog works for me. Left click, Chrome Version 34.0.1847.131 m, Win 7 64 bit

dusklight• 12 years ago

So understandably you don't want to be too specific about how you pick search results to beat the seo people, but could you talk briefly about how ddg returns results? Is it still some variant of PageRank?

CmdrKrool2• 12 years ago

I can't turn off the infinite scroll. I've set "Auto-load" in the settings to Off. But when I scroll to the end of the page new links still get appended automatically. This also happens on the current version DDG as well. Am I misunderstanding this option?

yegg11• 12 years ago

What browser/OS?

CmdrKrool2• 12 years ago

Firefox 28 on Windows XP. My usual browser, loaded up with all kinds of extensions and stuff, so I also tried:

Chrome 35.0.1912.2 (from portableapps.com) on Windows XP.

So as to make sure it's not my fault for using XP, I went and updated my Arch Linux box and tried:

Firefox 29.0 on Arch Linux

Chromium 34.0.1847.132 on Arch Linux

Both of those browsers are untouched by extensions.

In every one of these cases, I go to duckduckgo.com or next.duckduckgo.com, go to the settings, change "Auto-load" to 'Off', type the test search "Rob Hubbard" into the search box at the top, press enter, scroll to the bottom of the page by dragging the scrollbar with the mouse, and see the text "More Links..." automatically change to some animated dots and then the further results appear a moment later.

Hope all this detail is helpful!

MicroBerto• 12 years ago

Congrats on the launch!

At what point will your business development team be ready to discuss integrating new spices?

We have one coming that I think your team and users would like more than the existing one.

yegg11• 12 years ago

Right now! bd@duckduckgo.com

crater• 12 years ago

I think they did something good with the way (it seems) they standardized typing math equations. When you're searching some complicated integral with fractions and polynomials, you can pretty much put the spaces somewhere different every time in Google and get a different result. When I started typing an equation on DuckDuckGo I noticed that it automatically suggests a search with the spaces taken out of it.

Also, I searched "Juicy J Acapellas" and was impressed because I found some sites that I enjoyed that I hadn't ever found before.

alexman• 12 years ago

Just because it lets me use "j" "k" to navigate the search results and "/" to highlight the search text is enough a temptation for me to contemplate dumping Google. I hate how Google forces me to press "Tab" and the up/down arrow keys to navigate.

n3thin• 12 years ago

Minor Nitpick!! You got the spelling wrong for promotions at https://next.duckduckgo.com/about?t=i&kd=-1

agazso• 12 years ago

Scrolling is broken on Safari iOS7. The default behavior in Safari is when you scroll up, the controls appear (url bar, back/forward button, other tabs button etc.)

It seems DDG implements its own scrolling, so scrolling up does not make the controls appear, which is quite unexpected and makes a bad user experience.

ejain• 12 years ago

I'd use it, if only I could get them to index my site...

jan3er• 12 years ago

About the top row showing About/Images/Videos etc. I would like to use my vertical scroll wheel to move to the left and right instead of having to travel with my mouse all the way to the corner to hit the red arrow-button.

cyborgx7• 12 years ago

Maybe it's just me but I find the hamburger menu in the top right , now that firefox has one of those themeselves in a similar place, kind of unpleasing.

I also miss all the colours and I prefer when search buttons are actual buttons instead of an icon inside the text field.

NewsReader42• 12 years ago

The DDG team still cannot get the simple concept of seraching correct. We have had a website online for 3 years, every other major search engine finds and ranks it accordingly yet DDG doesn't even include it in their results.

If they're missing our own website from results how many other websites are missing from results which ends up not giving the user the BEST choice of options when performing a search.

morgangiraud• 12 years ago

This is not very important but yet there are a few typos on https://next.duckduckgo.com/about

"Less Clutter block" Our only focus is search. That means that our results are free of promotoions <--

"Discuss block" Our forums are a place -->for to<-- chat

hrvbr• 12 years ago

A search engine that doesn't track me shouldn't use Flash.

yegg11• 12 years ago

We don't -- where are you seeing flash?

blueskin_• 12 years ago

Finally: A redesign that isn't a 'remove everything useful' one. That said, the low contrast text is a pain to read (still some metro-ification, I guess), the results page's information density is too low, and the scroll effect feels like I'm on the brink of getting motion sickness (something I've only ever experienced with javascript fake scroll, I might add)).

Also, horizontal scrolling: Please, PLEASE, no. It's just horrible and should die.

progamler• 12 years ago

I like to see full links, that helps me to Validate the source and sort out webpages

joeblau• 12 years ago

I might switch back to this. Google is becoming more useless to me at it attempts to be everything to everybody else.

dabrowski• 12 years ago

Where is "Try this search on:" box that used to be on the right hand side? I found it extremely useful.

Also the dropdown in search button that allowed to, say, sort the results by date. (I often forget query parameters)

Overall I like the esthetic direction ddg is taking, unfortunately I found two good features missing.

davidgerard• 12 years ago

Introducing: awfulness.js

http://tommorris.org/posts/2547

idealform01• 12 years ago

I really like the new visual design, slick work!

One issue I have is with the infinite scrolling of the results. When at the bottom of the page I would like to know how many more results there are so I am not flying blind until I randomly get to the end of the results. Not aware of any formal studies to support this just opinion :)

prakashk• 12 years ago

The "What is this?" link below Cloud Save buttons doesn't respond (Firefox 30.0a2 on Ubuntu 12.04). Right-click and Open Link in a New Tab results in a "403 Forbidden".

jizzard• 12 years ago

I use spacebar and shift+spacebar to scroll up and down pages. The floating header covers up part of the text so I never get a chance to read it.

mstade• 12 years ago

I tried switching to DuckDuckGo about 8 months ago, maybe a year, but eventually went back to using Google simply because DuckDuckGo's search results were not nearly relevant enough. When I saw this redesign I was compelled to give it another try, and I'm happy to say that the results are way better than they used to be. The new UI is also very comfortable, and brings most features up to par with Google, especially the image and video search.

This is great work, and I'm very glad to now switch back to DuckDuckGo as my search engine of choice. Thanks!

The next version of DuckDuckGo

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