In July, we started to evolve the Google design and experience on Android and iOS tablets by updating features like larger touch targets and enhanced image viewing to make searching faster and easier. Today, we’re building on that foundation by adding a new image carousel for viewing large image results within a few swipes.
As someone who enjoys being outdoors, I like exploring beautiful images of nature. With the new image carousel, I can discover photos of bright sea anemones or colorful lorikeet birds on my tablet in a more interactive and immersive way. Now when I tap on an image result, it’ll expand in the carousel view and I can swipe through the search results. To learn more about an image, a tap on the web page preview, title, description or URL will take me directly to the webpage. See how you can take the image carousel for a spin:
Try out the new image carousel by going to Google on your iOS or Android tablet’s browser and searching for your favorite images. This feature is currently available in over 40 languages.
I hope you enjoy searching for beautiful images in this new view.
As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets. We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.
The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.
For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.
This improved search experience is rolling out in the coming days to iPad and Android 3.1+ tablets across 36 languages. Give it a try by going to www.google.com in your tablet’s browser.
When you do an image search, we find that it is typical that you will look through many pages of search results. So in the redesign of Google Image Search for mobile, available today for iPhone 3.0+ and Android 2.1 devices, we focused on making it easy to quickly see as many image thumbnails as possible:
The thumbnails are square to maximize the number of images we can get on the screen at one time so you can scan them quickly
You can swipe to see the next or previous page of results, or tap the large, stationary 'Next' and 'Previous' page buttons
We optimized for speed so that the images appear quickly when you browse
When it comes to viewing the images, we now make them as large as possible by introducing a special image viewing page:
The black background emphasizes the image and the buttons fade after a few seconds so you can just see images with little distraction
Easily browse through the images by swiping from picture to picture
To try this new version of Image Search, just go to www.google.com on your phone and tap on “Images.” The new experience is available in 38 languages worldwide. Whether you like to look through pictures of prom dresses, impressionist paintings or 猫 ジャンプ we hope you love this update to Image Search for mobile.
Update on 6/2 @ 5:40 pm: This version of Image Search is now available for all Android and Palm webOS devices.
Posted by Leo Ting, Software Engineer, and Nick Fey, User Experience Designer
Google is always looking to make it easier for you to search and explore the web on your phone. We recently launched Near me now, which lets you explore what's around you from the Google home page, and a category browse feature on Local Search with categorized business listings. Today, we're happy to announce Popular Images which lets you browse and find interesting images.
This feature is accessible from Google Image Search on Android-powered devices and iPhones in the US. To try it out, go to www.google.com on your phone browser and click on "Images". Under the search box, you will see a few of the top images along with a link to "Browse Popular Images".
Clicking the link opens up a categorized list of image searches and corresponding images.
We have organized popular images across a few categories like Movies, Sports, Cars & Bikes, Music, and Cartoons. You can click on individual categories to see related images corresponding to what's popular on Google Image Search. The queries are automatically categorized with an algorithm that will continue to improve over time. One special category is Trends, which shows image queries from Google Trends that have especially high recent activity.
Give it a try and have fun exploring images.
Posted by Jignashu Parikh and Varun Sharma, Google Mobile Engineering
The image results are tightly packed, making optimal use of the screen space on your phone and allowing you to scan eight to fourteen images on a single results page. Clicking an image leads to a details page, which not only shows a larger thumbnail, but also lets you either visit the web page hosting the image or view the image itself in full size. Moreover you can navigate the search results using "next" and "previous" links. These features are designed to make browsing and searching for images on your phone easier and faster.
How to use Image Search: 1. Go to google.com and click on “Images.” 2. Do a search query. The results page shows related images, clicking on an image loads the details page. 3. The image details page shows a larger thumbnail and links to the original website and image. You could also navigate to other results using "Next Image" link. Posted by Varun Sharma and Jignashu Parikh, Software Engineers, Google Mobile Team
Today we launched a new Image Search results page for Android, iPhone, and iPod touch in the US, the UK, and Japan.
With the new Image Search results, you can easily scan up to 20 images on a single results page and get the details for images that interest you. From the details page, you can view a larger thumbnail, visit the web page containing the image, or view the image by itself in full size. The new results page also supports "search-by-style" filters, which allow you to restrict your search results to people's faces, clip art, line drawings, or photo content. This feature was previously launched on Google Image Search in December 2008, and we are excited to now bring this feature to mobile.
To try it yourself, go to google.com on your Android-powered device , iPhone, or iPod touch, and click on "Images" before doing your search.
How to use Image Search:
1. To begin image search, go to google.com and click on “Images.”
2. The results page shows related images. Clicking on an image loads the details page.
3. On results page, the “filter” option on the blue bar allows selection of image style and SafeSearch settings.
4. The image details page shows a larger thumbnail and links to the original website and image.
Posted by Leo Ting, Software Engineer, Google Mobile Search
