Pros & Cons
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- Canvas view lets you do more with gadgets.
- Full-page feed view.
- Loads faster than Netvibes or Pageflakes.
- No display ads.
- Theme search.
- Highlights editor-recommended gadgets.
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- Still trails Yahoo! in content service integration and display conveniences.
- Pageflakes has a slicker customization interface and better sharing options.
iGoogle (fall 2008) Specs
| OS Compatibility: | Linux |
| OS Compatibility: | Mac OS |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
Google's answer to My Yahoo! has recently been updated, so it seems to be a good time for another look. Like
The changes have already sparked some backlash in Web discussion forums, with some users complaining that they constitute a step backward. One has even drafted an online petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/igoogle/) urging Google to let users switch back to the earlier layout. Yahoo!, by comparison, allowed users to switch back and forth for a year before enforcing the new My Yahoo! design. That's a better approach, in my opinion. But let's take a closer look at the iGoogle redesign and see whether it constitutes a gain, a loss, or a wash.
More Canvas
The biggest new change in iGoogle is its Canvas view. Canvas is a way for gadgets to expand to nearly the full Web page. For example, using Canvas view, a Gmail gadget can grow large enough for you to read and compose e-mails from inside iGoogle. When I first read about Canvas, I wondered why I wouldn't just go to Gmail's own full Web page when I wanted to do more than just glance at a few e-mail subject lines. But I realized that the idea made sense when I tried out the Canvas mode and saw that the iGoogle header and menus remain accessible. With Canvas, you get full e-mail functionality while retaining access to all your iGoogle content. I do, however, agree with critics who say that the basic Gmail gadget should include a way to click on an e-mail's subject to go directly to that e-mail, as you can do in My Yahoo!.
Note that Canvas mode doesn't work with all gadgets—only those designed to take advantage of it. For example, the iGoogle gadget for Yahoo! Mail still appears as a small list when you maximize it. But Google has redesigned most of its own major gadgets, such as YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Google Translate, along with the aforementioned Gmail. Some major third-party gadgets, too, support Canvas mode—The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post provide news in the new format. Entertainment gadgets, too, have been updated, including TV Guide, Flixter movies, and iLike's music gadgets. One case in which the larger view makes a lot of sense is the GoComics gadget—it would be hard to enjoy its comic strips if you had to squint at a tiny standard gadget.—
What's Become of My Tabs?
I initially thought it was odd to do away with the tabs along the top of iGoogle pages that let you sort topics of interest onto their own pages. Then again, I have tabs on my My Yahoo! page but never use them! So maybe having your content categories always visible in the left-hand panel makes sense. Even though the tabs along the top have been replaced with expandable (using the plus sign) menu items down the left-hand side of the page, the context menus still refer to them as "tabs," with choices for editing, sharing, deleting, and adding.
The new "tabs" take a little getting used to: A plus sign next to, say, your News tab drops down a list of all your news gadgets, while leaving the main center view on whatever category you were viewing. However, clicking on just the title "News" fills your center view with all your news gadgets. Clicking on an entry in the list dropped down by the plus sign displays the gadget in full Canvas view in the center page area. Note that if the gadget hasn't been updated for Canvas view, you'll get the small gadget with a lot of white space around it, as I did with the Bejewelled game gadget.—
Better Feed Reading
One area in which the Canvas makes a lot of sense is for reading RSS or Atom feeds—and a great many gadgets are in fact little more than feeds, anyway. The new design basically turns iGoogle into a quite competent feed reader. If you use Google Reader, you can keep track of your favorites with stars and share feed items on a public Web page provided by iGoogle.
Aside from the major new features, Google has made progress on some of the complaints from my last review—for one, now you can search for themes, and an Editor's Picks section of gadgets has been added to guide users to those which are most essential. And Google's own Web services such as Google Finance and Google Calendar have been improved, too.
Some will lament the loss of standard tabs along the top, and I still miss a powerful omni-gadget such as My Yahoo!'s Personal Assistant, which gives easy access to your six most essential gadgets. All gadgets have white backgrounds, and the layout choice—three or fewer columns—is limited compared with the competition's layout options.
I still consider My Yahoo!, with its host of online services, more customizable and better integrated (and now it no longer displays annoying ads on your start page). And Pageflakes is still the winner when it comes to ease of customization and community-sharing capabilities. But the advances iGoogle has made since my last review oblige me to raise its score a notch this time around. iGoogle is moving in the right direction, and it doesn't hurt that it has the biggest name on the Web behind it.
More Website Reviews:
Final Thoughts
iGoogle (fall 2008)
iGoogle steps closer to the top of the personal portal/start page class with its latest revision. The new Canvas view gives more space to content, and the company has addressed several of the issues we brought up last time around, like editorially recommended gadgets.