Comments on: Did Apple pitch a fit?

Did Apple pitch a fit?

shoepal — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:25:06 -0800

GoogleX : Homage, late night idea or something more? (via a comment @ Mofi)

By: shoepal

shoepal — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:28:32 -0800

Obviously, the first link is only a mirror of GoogleX as it appeared on the 15th/16th before it was disappeared by the Labs. (They reserve the right to remove things, of course) Oh, and yeah, I know, GOOGLEFILTER! Sosumi!

By: blacklite

blacklite — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:38:22 -0800

it's cuteish, but given the state of the industry I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has some bizarre patent on anything remotely like their menu.

By: kika

kika — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:35:30 -0800

Hey! That was my comment! I got it here, BTW.

By: shoepal

shoepal — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:44:56 -0800

Thanks kika!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:57:59 -0800

strange. but what it needed was the ability to change what Icons you can have on there.

By: evoo

evoo — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 21:02:30 -0800

I love my Mac and I love OSX, but the silly magnification on the dock was the first thing I turned off in my system preferences. (Followed by the "genie effect.") It is pretty and all, but I'd file this under "homage" and bet you $1 that it will never wind up on Google's front page.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 21:26:46 -0800

they need to program the bulging of the bar when the mouse is already hovering and moves to the next icon... otherwise pretty neat

By: spock

spock — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:00:54 -0800

Actually, MeFi had it before MonkeyFilter. :P Seriously, I think it is VERY clever scripting and finally got a local copy to study.

By: spock

spock — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:04:53 -0800

By the way, the problem may not have been with Apple but with the owners of the trademark on "googlex". Not sure who that might be, but googlex.com is owned by some Hong Kong people.

By: shoepal

shoepal — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:28:39 -0800

Thanks spock. The circuit is now complete.

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 23:29:27 -0800

Color me confused -- what is unique or different or special about it? AFAICT, it's just regular ol' Google. What am I missing?

By: BlackLeotardFront

BlackLeotardFront — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 23:43:36 -0800

I'm not sure either, davidmsc. Looks like it's just a google that's harder to use.

By: spock

spock — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 04:55:25 -0800

Assuming you have javascript on, you should see an image effect, similar to the Dock in OS X, when you hover over the images. The cleverness (from my perspective) is that this is not merely an image-replacement rollover effect but the image appears to "zoom" to the larger size (where it is joined by a text label that appears in another table field). The other images in the row (original sizes) move apart to make room for the larger image.

By: blasdelf

blasdelf — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 05:44:33 -0800

The dock-style doesn't stay the same when you click on any of the icons. Its not a problem with the mirror, it was the same way originally. The fancy icons just take you to the normal pages for the features. Blech...

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 08:32:07 -0800

I was just discussing this with someone and found myself tripped up by: This looks like it says "Google X," i.e. it would be pronounced "Google, X." But shouldn't it really be said out loud as "Google Ten"?

By: unsupervised

unsupervised — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:31:33 -0800

I haven't used the dock in OSX since I downloaded Quicksilver. GoogleX reminded me why.

By: thejoshu

thejoshu — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:37:59 -0800

whoa! that first link goes to thejosher.com!

By: bz

bz — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:40:11 -0800

The magnification stuff isn't particularly original to Apple. Many web sites and applications were doing similar things well before OS X appeared. It's such an obvious "focus" approach.

By: gren

gren — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:08:20 -0800

Whoever runs thejosher.com forgot something...when the images come to full magnification they are swapped out with their full-res cousin (labs-sm.gif > labs.gif) which is why on this mirror they look all chunkstyle. This googlex link has had the code cleaned up considerably (the js actually makes some sense to read) and has added a GMail link into the 'dock' for your enjoyment...not to mention a handy zip package for everyone to download and mirror it with :)

By: shoepal

shoepal — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 11:19:28 -0800

Thanks Gren. I figured better mirrors would pop up as people downloaded the code and cleaned it up. Much appreciated.

By: Down10

Down10 — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:28:27 -0800

The hell with that-- Google Maps works in Safari now! ::rejoices::