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from the how-about-you-provide-search-results-and-leave-my-system-choices-alone dept.
The Mighty Buzzard (no not our Buzzard, This Buzzard), aka ElReg, reports that Google is serving up ancient renditions of its search engine to users of "ancient" browsers. They also tried this with Gmail, but finally just gave up and refused to support old browsers.
The old version of Search still delivers modern "hits", but the layout is decidedly old school.
Probably as a stunt, or to prevent having to maintain web page code long since obsolete, the search pages are simply rendered in the way they would have appeared when these older browsers were fresh on the scene. The search entry page looks slightly old, (says 2913), but the search result layout is decidedly old school.
Opera 12, Safari 5 are seeing old version, as well as some other older versions of Windows, including ancient IE 6.0
One user posted screen shots on Google Forums. One shot of Google's Image looking like a refuge from the Pleistocene.
Its not that some of these browsers can't handle the newer Search layout. They worked fine until a day ago. Some browsers (Midori) are also getting the geezer treatment even though Midori handles all the latest web technologies like HTML 5 and CSS3, and is based on fairly recent webkit engine, and had no problems rendering Google's search, or even Bing's more intensive image search.
It appears to be just Google's way of saying its time to move on. Maybe it will backfire. I kind of like the old look.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by evilviper on Tuesday September 02 2014, @12:23AM
The one place I'd WANT the old Google layout, in the Links browser, it's still using the latest layout instead of an older version. [twibright.com]
The layout used-to be perfect for text-mode browsers... The search box was the first selectable element on the page, so your focus would go right to that, and you could just start typing once the page loaded. Once they put links to image search and other services at the top, above the search box, those links steal the focus, and you have to navigate down to the search box first, every time the page loads.
Today, duckduckgo's home page isn't perfect, but is far, far less cluttered than Google's, so it's far and away superior, both for text mode browsers and mobile (small screen) browsers.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NowhereMan on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:08AM
DuckDuckGo is using some javascript now but if you want the plain search page use https://duckduckgo.com/html [duckduckgo.com]. That will take you to the non-javascript page, all it has is the logo and the search field. By default that is the one I use.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:15AM
People still go to the search page to do searches? I thought by this point all browsers let you do it from the url line with a letter and then the search terms, ie, "x soylent" (with g for google, d for duckduckgo, b for bing, w for wikipedia, plus the ability to add new custom ones).
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Tuesday September 02 2014, @04:03AM
Doesn't work any better... The image is still hyperlinked, and takes focus on page load.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @04:05AM
used-to be[...]The search box was the first selectable element on the page
Have you tried adding #mn to the URL?
(A browser that allows you to mark a bit of a web page and view the source code for that is awesome. That would be SeaMonkey.)
I almost never see Google's home page.
I type what I want into the address bar.
My starting page is set to a blank (null).
-- gewg_