Google Earth criticism

[mmcirvin]

Bill Bumgarner weighs in: he doesn't like the GUI at all. I have similar complaints, but based on what I've seen of it, I think the Windows version has the same faults; these aren't specific to Mac support.

I think Google Earth gets cut a lot of slack just from the sheer joy of what it does, so people are willing to overlook its faults. On the other hand, that situation might be dangerous for Google, since they themselves started out by walloping competitors who were getting along that way. They weren't the first Web search engine, just the first one that worked correctly.

(The Mac version also has specific glitches of its own that probably come from the fact that it's an initial port: some resource strings refer to stuff specific to the Windows version, and F10's role as an Exposé trigger means that it can't run the Tour.)

Comments

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

Google Earth makes me cranky. The images, even of static maps that shouldn't change from day to day, don't load half the time. The applications on the GE page might be kind of nice but they don't mean much when you can't see what you were looking for.

I remember AltaVista used to have a great search engine. About the time Google started really giving other engines serious competition, AV switched their search algorithm. I saw a segment on the old "Screen Savers" about it and knew AV was boned. They were.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That's the other problem: they sometimes seem to be stressing their back end beyond its capabilities.

But it's interesting to speculate about how I'd redesign the client to make it better. Note that it's not actually a Google program. I played with Keyhole a little before Google bought it (I think it was a subscription service, and my dad subscribed). It strikes me that they've basically kept it the way it was when it probably needs a radical redesign.

They can probably get some guidance by thinking about their own Google Maps/Google Local, which is much cleaner. Google Local has little floating controls instead of a big toolbar at the bottom with empty space in it. Google Earth has more controls, but they could still put them in a little optional superimposed palette like the new overview map. Many people are going to use mouse dragging and the keyboard anyway, so they ought to be able to get rid of them entirely.

The little search bar is fine where it is, and popping out search results in a sidebar is good, but those Places and Layers sidebars shouldn't be taking up space the rest of the time; that's area that should be devoted to more visuals if it's possible. I also think that while Google Local effectively does the same thing with three kinds of search bar, it implements it in a cleaner, prettier way than the tabbed interface.

The Places and Layers sidebars shouldn't even be sidebars. They can be replaced with floating palettes or wholly separate dialog windows (I generally despise the modern tendency to cram things into sidebars and panes that shouldn't be). Make them accessible from drop-down menus if they want instant access.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Also, they should give some better organization to the Layers list. It's a mess. Things you'd rarely want to see are categorized above basic things like turning cities on and off.

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

I wondered about that myself. The couple times I went to play with Google Earth it seemed hard to find what I wanted, and I suspect the organization was part of the problem. I'm just such a futz with new software/applications/etc. that I often blame myself for not understanding what's going on rather than the design.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Maybe they could make the Layers list searchable. There are things called "search engines" that Google might want to look into for this purpose.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

The interface design is mostly copied from the Windows version, yes, but the fact that it uses the glaringly non-native Qt toolkit doesn't really help it any. It would be nice if they moved this codebase on to Unix, and did some fresh new code for OS X.