Dear Google, I want my screen real estate back. For the past four years I have organized my life with Calendar, and while the new look is generally cleaner, it reduces the area for the main focus of the page — the calendar. The week view on my wee little netbook screen loses an hour of visible time and has thinner day columns. Normally I wouldn’t be miffed over a few pixels, but one of your key design principles for these changes is Elasticity: The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from your desktop computer to your mobile phone to your tablet, while keeping a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness. It’s clear that more emphasis was put on style in this change. I have to wonder where netbooks fall in that classification — we still behave like desktops, but we have similar sized screens to a tablet; did tablets experience this misappropriation of space as well, or are they given a platform-specific design? The standardized treatment for the search bar struck me as a huge waste of space at first (in 4 years I’ve used calendar search maybe a handful of times), but on comparing to the old version it is only a pixel or two taller; where most of the space is lost is the added padding in and around the navigation bar. Reasonable, but aggravating. It would be nice to be able to collapse the search bar and left sidebar (like you can with Tasks on the right), enabling some sort of “full-screen” view. Also, I never use the “Create” button…and while it may be considered a primary call to action on the page, I resent all the space and emphasis it’s getting. And what’s up with that big margin on the left of everything? Yours Overcritically, Jamie
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Dear Google,

I want my screen real estate back. For the past four years I have organized my life with Calendar, and while the new look is generally cleaner, it reduces the area for the main focus of the page — the calendar. The week view on my wee little netbook screen loses an hour of visible time and has thinner day columns.

Normally I wouldn’t be miffed over a few pixels, but one of your key design principles for these changes is

Elasticity: The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from your desktop computer to your mobile phone to your tablet, while keeping a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness.

It’s clear that more emphasis was put on style in this change. I have to wonder where netbooks fall in that classification — we still behave like desktops, but we have similar sized screens to a tablet; did tablets experience this misappropriation of space as well, or are they given a platform-specific design?

The standardized treatment for the search bar struck me as a huge waste of space at first (in 4 years I’ve used calendar search maybe a handful of times), but on comparing to the old version it is only a pixel or two taller; where most of the space is lost is the added padding in and around the navigation bar. Reasonable, but aggravating. It would be nice to be able to collapse the search bar and left sidebar (like you can with Tasks on the right), enabling some sort of “full-screen” view. Also, I never use the “Create” button…and while it may be considered a primary call to action on the page, I resent all the space and emphasis it’s getting. And what’s up with that big margin on the left of everything?

Yours Overcritically,

Jamie

OF COURSE they do this as I’m about to graduate and will no longer need 7 different colored calendars to keep track of my different types of activities…oy.
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OF COURSE they do this as I’m about to graduate and will no longer need 7 different colored calendars to keep track of my different types of activities…oy.

Source: gmailblog.blogspot.com

Absolutely hate the new Google Calendar favicon. It’s ugly and doesn’t match their usual style…and the 31 doesn’t scream “CALENDAR” at me. It might be at least useful if it displayed the current date, but that probably wouldn’t be technically practical, at least for people like me who leave it up in the background and don’t refresh the entire page every day.
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Absolutely hate the new Google Calendar favicon. It’s ugly and doesn’t match their usual style…and the 31 doesn’t scream “CALENDAR” at me. It might be at least useful if it displayed the current date, but that probably wouldn’t be technically practical, at least for people like me who leave it up in the background and don’t refresh the entire page every day.