Wow.... I got excited for finally a single place to go for hangouts (I was always confused at the best "launch point") and a better interface (chat on gmail hasn't changed in what feels like a decade) and lo and behold... It's a pretty launch interface but the SAME CRAPPY CHAT WINDOWS... I've always felt like hangouts was a horribly mismanaged product (starting and joining a hangout has always been a longer and more difficult process than it should) and this just confirms it.
There is SO MUCH potential and they've thrown it all away and not even for some gain. It'd be one thing if the interface sucked because of ads or something like that but no, it just sucks to suck. I continually have high hopes for hangouts and google does their best to dash them every time (Oh look they finally 'got it'... Nevermind, they fell flat on their faces again).
2) Upon need, click on that, wait for URL to change, and then send resulting URL over $IM_SYSTEM_OF_CHOICE
Best UI I've found so far to what I think is a pretty stellar video/voice communication product. Now if they would only fix hardware acceleration on Mac...
Starting a hangout often works for me, but I rarely get notification messages. Sometimes it takes half an hour or more to get a notification that was sent by someone in the same room. I switched to SMS for IMs, because people don't get the Hangouts messages reliably.
Hangouts could be good, but it's awful at the moment. I wish they had at least kept the XMPP integration. I strongly suspect that Google would be more successful if they went back to a more open approach. If they had backed Diaspora rather than creating Google Plus, it would now be huge. Google Plus didn't even have a decent API. I have a lot of ideas on how to salvage it, but no one at Google has ever responded to my suggestions.
What exactly is wrong with the Hangouts UI? Admittedly I've only used it a few times, but it's always seemed leagues ahead of the unusable mess that Skype has become.
Google's UX/design now reminds of MSN/Hotmail/Yahoo of 10 years ago. All the pointless image-heavy neutral visual noise. Why on earth are you showing me that waterfall background? I don't want your watered down elevator music.
Google needs to remember why Gmail, Reader, etc ended up destroying the aforementioned products in terms of UX, and change the direction it's headed at.
Google has some of the worst UIs in the tech industry. Materials Design is not good. Google Plus is so bloated with JS that it wouldn't run on my netbook with 4 Gb of RAM. The animations and "cute" easings make me feel uncomfortable whenever I open a Google product. Gmail is only tolerable when loaded through Thunderbird.
Google does well when they stick to the Craig's List school of graphic design. If G+ looked like Craig's List and had a good API, it would have done much better. One of their mistakes is that they are trying to be innovative in an area that they have never been good at (design). It would be better to be very conservative with design and focus on being innovative in their strong areas (e.g., data).
Constructive feedback: get rid of the animations, stop cropping profile photos into circles, and go much lighter on the JavaScript, abandon Materials Design and model everything off the Google homepage: think "information not animation."
I've always wondered why there is no dedicated Hangouts website. I always had to choose between Gmail and Google Plus to send a message. This may have been a way to encourage the uses of their other services? Anyways, finally they made a reasonable choice.
The chat window looks still elementary, though. I expected it to expand to fit the browser window. But it is still the tiny one that can be seen in Gmail and Google Plus, which is a bit annoying to use.
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but that is a considerable amount of wasted space (Hi, rp1229!
Get started by calling or messaging a friend below). I thought my messages would show up there, but nope, they just show up on the bottom similar to other Google sites.
Am I the only one that longs for what used to be the awesomeness that is gchat?
Gchat with what hangouts has for calls/voice/video would've basically been the win. Instead it constantly feels like this buggy/gimped browser app that maybe/maybe doesn't work.
I'm confused. Shouldn't the large space on right be where the IM window was supposed to pop in? Is it just a launch interface for already-available hangout app?
This might actually be slower than my current solution for hangouts, which is to open an empty circle in Google+. (If I open the Google+ home page, I see lots of social feed activity that a) I don't care about and b) takes a while to load.)
I'm often behind a slow public-wifi network and restricted on battery, so the amount of bandwidth and CPU used just to get me to text chat is actively a problem. I miss the XMPP days.
oh XMPP, you mean the protocol that required a TCP connection, and thus battery-draining maintaining a persistent connection ?
I was an XMPP enthusiast. Sadly, it never made the jump to mobile properly. I wish they had amended the standard to to add a session manager that would work well with mobile. Instead, last I check, everyone implemented their own hack. Google first, with Android GTalk. They used ProtoBufs [1]
Hey, did you know WhatsApp was based on XMPP? Yeah, good luck using that with an open client: their terms of service allows them to kick you off for using an unofficial client.
[1] I've come to think ProtoBufs would make a perfectly good transport for a hypothetical XMPP2. It's better packed, can be better framed, and as far as I've glanced allows the same extensibility as XML gave XMPP.
That's not necessarily bad. It just means someone thought that it was more important for the interface to be easy to discover than it was to keep it clean.
In my opinion a good IM system needs to be both easy (as it targets a mainstream audience that needs to voluntarily adopt it, a trouble that MS's offerings never had) and powerful (as it quickly becomes a big part of your day to day). Not the easiest tradeoff to design to.
The clear upper hand granted to the former in this product release is pretty telling of Google's conundrum: they need to gain adoption over everything else.
The most annoying problem with Hangouts is that I have to load the whole Gmail tab for answering a single message on my laptop. This tool is a lot faster. I zoomed to 125%, adblocked the bing background image & the now cropped giant greeting.
Nicer interface, but have they done anything about power consumption? Would like to be able to run a 30 minute hangout without completely draining the battery on my Macbook Pro.
Just wanted to chime in that I strongly dislike the new facelift to hangouts for Android. Loading images in the chat cause it to stutter pretty hard on my Nexus 5.
On Windows 10, still fails to respect both Hangout's own sound settings for speaker/mic as well as the Windows configured default communication device. So while I like this interface better, any number of other services I use (e.g. Zoom, Skype) just work better with my devices. Those other services can switch to using my bluetooth headset on calls and similar.
Google really is a technology company, not a products company. They have some really very clever ideas and implement them with great mediocrity more often than they should. And even when they get something solid, you can never really tell for how long the product will last or if they'll start screwing with it.
For me, the only things that really come to mind as solid are maps and search. Google Now, great... if you don't have a Google Apps account. Inbox, great... if you don't need a bit slightly sophisticated formatting or image support. etc.
Are you using chrome? I ran into the same issue (wouldn't respect audio settings) plus it burned 100% cup on all four cores and the audio kept breaking up.
It turns out that IE 10 is good for something! Not only do the hangout plugin audio settings work but the sound itself works (no more disrupted streams) and cpu hangs out around 50% across 4 cores. Much better!
[+] [-] joshstrange|10 years ago|reply
There is SO MUCH potential and they've thrown it all away and not even for some gain. It'd be one thing if the interface sucked because of ads or something like that but no, it just sucks to suck. I continually have high hopes for hangouts and google does their best to dash them every time (Oh look they finally 'got it'... Nevermind, they fell flat on their faces again).
[+] [-] gomox|10 years ago|reply
1) Put https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/ on your web browser bookmark bar
2) Upon need, click on that, wait for URL to change, and then send resulting URL over $IM_SYSTEM_OF_CHOICE
Best UI I've found so far to what I think is a pretty stellar video/voice communication product. Now if they would only fix hardware acceleration on Mac...
[+] [-] jefftchan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshMnem|10 years ago|reply
Hangouts could be good, but it's awful at the moment. I wish they had at least kept the XMPP integration. I strongly suspect that Google would be more successful if they went back to a more open approach. If they had backed Diaspora rather than creating Google Plus, it would now be huge. Google Plus didn't even have a decent API. I have a lot of ideas on how to salvage it, but no one at Google has ever responded to my suggestions.
[+] [-] mintplant|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amlgsmsn|10 years ago|reply
>It appears as if you’re using an old or uncommon browser that doesn’t support common standards.
>To access Hangouts, upgrade to the latest version of any of the following browsers:
>Download Chrome >Download Firefox >Download Internet Explorer
Web standards, they said.
[+] [-] blhack|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fluidcruft|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sssilver|10 years ago|reply
Google needs to remember why Gmail, Reader, etc ended up destroying the aforementioned products in terms of UX, and change the direction it's headed at.
[+] [-] JoshMnem|10 years ago|reply
Google does well when they stick to the Craig's List school of graphic design. If G+ looked like Craig's List and had a good API, it would have done much better. One of their mistakes is that they are trying to be innovative in an area that they have never been good at (design). It would be better to be very conservative with design and focus on being innovative in their strong areas (e.g., data).
Constructive feedback: get rid of the animations, stop cropping profile photos into circles, and go much lighter on the JavaScript, abandon Materials Design and model everything off the Google homepage: think "information not animation."
[+] [-] rsuelzer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barosl|10 years ago|reply
The chat window looks still elementary, though. I expected it to expand to fit the browser window. But it is still the tiny one that can be seen in Gmail and Google Plus, which is a bit annoying to use.
[+] [-] rp1229|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joenathan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linkydinkandyou|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bfrog|10 years ago|reply
Gchat with what hangouts has for calls/voice/video would've basically been the win. Instead it constantly feels like this buggy/gimped browser app that maybe/maybe doesn't work.
[+] [-] niuzeta|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kethinov|10 years ago|reply
1. Bundle this into an NW.js app and we've finally got a Hangouts desktop app at long last!
2. Those tiny chat windows are a usability disaster. Come on. Take a cue from messenger.com!
[+] [-] geofft|10 years ago|reply
I'm often behind a slow public-wifi network and restricted on battery, so the amount of bandwidth and CPU used just to get me to text chat is actively a problem. I miss the XMPP days.
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|10 years ago|reply
oh XMPP, you mean the protocol that required a TCP connection, and thus battery-draining maintaining a persistent connection ?
I was an XMPP enthusiast. Sadly, it never made the jump to mobile properly. I wish they had amended the standard to to add a session manager that would work well with mobile. Instead, last I check, everyone implemented their own hack. Google first, with Android GTalk. They used ProtoBufs [1]
Hey, did you know WhatsApp was based on XMPP? Yeah, good luck using that with an open client: their terms of service allows them to kick you off for using an unofficial client.
[1] I've come to think ProtoBufs would make a perfectly good transport for a hypothetical XMPP2. It's better packed, can be better framed, and as far as I've glanced allows the same extensibility as XML gave XMPP.
[+] [-] zhuxuefeng1994|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gomox|10 years ago|reply
In my opinion a good IM system needs to be both easy (as it targets a mainstream audience that needs to voluntarily adopt it, a trouble that MS's offerings never had) and powerful (as it quickly becomes a big part of your day to day). Not the easiest tradeoff to design to.
The clear upper hand granted to the former in this product release is pretty telling of Google's conundrum: they need to gain adoption over everything else.
[+] [-] jesalg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fluidcruft|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rekoros|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fwn|10 years ago|reply
The most annoying problem with Hangouts is that I have to load the whole Gmail tab for answering a single message on my laptop. This tool is a lot faster. I zoomed to 125%, adblocked the bing background image & the now cropped giant greeting.
[+] [-] taf2|10 years ago|reply
All I see when I visit is
500. That’s an error.
There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know.
[+] [-] saurik|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xfr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_karana|10 years ago|reply
This is the same, rudimentary "interface" that has always worked in all the browsers. :/
[+] [-] deanstag|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgentry|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gomox|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TD-Linux|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] AustinG08|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sheepdestroyer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbuttgereit|10 years ago|reply
Google really is a technology company, not a products company. They have some really very clever ideas and implement them with great mediocrity more often than they should. And even when they get something solid, you can never really tell for how long the product will last or if they'll start screwing with it.
For me, the only things that really come to mind as solid are maps and search. Google Now, great... if you don't have a Google Apps account. Inbox, great... if you don't need a bit slightly sophisticated formatting or image support. etc.
[+] [-] mmmpie|10 years ago|reply