Google has launched a minor refit of its local iGoogle home page, including ‘canvas view’ gadgets that can expand and contract without leaving the iGoogle site and a bunch of additional news feed gadgets.
To enable canvas view, iGoogle has ditched its previous tabbed navigation system in favour of left-side navigation controls. If you spend a lot of time in iGoogle, canvas view could be useful, though the restore button could do with being a bit more obvious in the current gadgets. Other local additions to the range include news feeds from news.com.au, Australian Business and the NRL, and a childcare search gadget from CareForKids.com.au. Hit the link for a Google tour of the new features.
dave
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 3:23 PMI hate this change.I’ve had to delete some gadgets so that they all still fit on the page
pinchies
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 3:55 PMStupid Google! I was using the .au version of the site to escape the stupid side tabs!! Now what do I do? Time to go homepage shopping I guess!
Keegan Lillo
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 4:15 PMWell if you use the http://www.google.com/ig?gl=all URL u can escape it. (for the time being)
The new layout is really stupid. The left nav throws everything off balance
danielpenna
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 11:13 AMLooks like Google has figured out that shortcut (http://www.google.com/ig?gl=all) and is defaulting to the new scheme today. Yesterday the link took you to the old scheme.
yurkyurk
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 4:38 PMThis is awful. Now I have a useless column down the left-hand side and my page is all squished.
Skythe
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 4:50 PMUmm, am i missing something? I’ve had canvas view on my iGoogle for several months, this article seems to imply it’s something new?
Angus Kidman
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 5:11 PMMight well depend on your location settings — other commenters have suggested they’ve used the Australian site to avoid it, which suggests it has been active elsewhere.
David Llewellyn
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 5:19 PMHate the side tabs. It takes up precious screen space for no reason. I’m looking for something else
citizendee
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 9:18 PMAre you people serious – it takes up a third of a gadget width?! Looks fine on my monitor. Good luck finding something else though. Really.
Mal
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 6:27 AMThe left TABS are a waste of space! Why do I need a menu of what on the screen in front of me????
Why can’t I go back to the old tab layout. Hate it.
Daleyo
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 8:26 AMJust use the http://www.google.co.nz/ig New zealand site. They haven’t changed it yet…
Keegan Lillo
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 8:19 PMdo not want New Zealand…
If you have Adblock Plus for Firefoz u can add this:
google.com.au#td(class=leftborder)
to get rid of the left tabs… You do lose navigation fn though. I only really use one tab any way. Though if u needed to get to the other ones, you could just bookmark them.
Keegan Lillo
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 8:22 PMThe new full pane things are neat. I just wish the GMail gadget had a view of my labels…
But seriously why with the left nav. You could just as easily have drop down menus for those. And the chat would be far more convenient as an actual gadget…