November 07, 2003

deskbar

I know it’s beta, but why the heck does the Google deskbar waste so much real estate in its result set by insisting on showing the Google logo and nav? The design intent of the tool is right on: provide fast, reasonably unobtrusive access to Google services in a keyboard-friendly manner. They nailed the taskbar component, but need to refine the search results component by developing a custom results page that (a) optimizes screen real estate and (b) leverages the keyboard-friendly nature of the rest of the app. Personally, I’m hoping for an alternate UI that ditches the browser component and displays results in a richer client…