Someone at Google must be a little sad right about now. This guy decided to take the initiative and update the interface for Google Images a little bit, adding some stuff while retaining the same general look, and he got a very public smackdown from the community (I’m looking at you, mirror). So, after a very negative reception from users, Google has undone all that coder’s hard work, and we are left right back where we started, with the original Google Images interface.

Which is all just a roundabout way of saying that Google has brought back Google Images to the way it used to be, complete with text expanding on all the images. The redesign had removed all the text, save a snippet supposed to inform about the picture, with the rest of the info showing up if you rolled your mouse over, an inefficient method to say the least. In restoring the old version, Google has made one change: They now show only the website the image appears on, not the entire URL of the image.

I also discovered something strange and interesting about Google Images: If you resize your browser, Google reloads (AJAX-style) all the images on the page, reordering them to fit your new browser window. Google aqpparently wants the images to make a perfect grid, even to the point of showing less images per page on larger browser windows!

Take a look:

18 images, three rows of six, running full screen:

20 images, four rows of five:

20 images, five rows of four:

18 images, six rows of three:

21 images, three rows of seven (by setting browser zoom to 85%):

So, Google Images always shows between 18 and 21 images, based on the width of your browser. It doesn’t seem to care about the height. When you resize the page, all the images reload, because it isn’t the browser handling the resizing, it is Google Images. The page doesn’t reload, just the images, some good (and extremely subtle) use of AJAX.

Oddly enough, if you run Google Images large enough to get six images across, you are actually seeing less images on the page than you would with a smaller browser! It might be a good idea, if it is available to you, to run Images in a zoomed mode or smaller browser, just to get more per page. Interesting stuff.

By the way, if you are the Googler who did the redesign, don’t feel bad. Your heart was in the right place, your code pure. Next time, a shower of roses shall await you at your cubicle.