Age of Logo Redesign

The past few months have seen some slight to major redesigns of some major websites. The fact that these have come months apart maybe a coincidence.

Google Logo

The new Google design including logo was mentioned in this post earlier. Above you can see the old logo on the left with the updated flat style logo to its right. The change was from a logo with 3D look with shadow to plain and flat look.

Yahoo Logo

It all started when Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer announced a "30 days of Change", with a new logo for 30 days. At the end of which Yahoo! released their new logo - the same Yahoo and an exclamation mark as shown above. It can easily be noted that the logo has slimmed down and they have used a sans serif font instead. The old logo looked funky, but the new one sporting a darker purple has an elegant look. You can also see it has a slight 3D look and feel to it.

Bing Logo

Bing - Microsoft's answer to Google was the last to do the overhaul. But the change to Bing is more vivid. They have a new logo, which looks like Google Drive's. Then the font has been simplified to follow the new Microsoft logo. And at last it is all golden color now from a blue shade.

In a space of few months, some major websites have tinkered with their logos. What do you think of these changes?

Tips on Improving Productivity with Eclipse

For many tasks Eclipse IDE provides a key board shortcut of some type. When working with medium to large projects, I find using keyboard shortcuts to be a significant time saver. They let me find or get things done very fast. Compared to using a menu option or using the mouse, key board shortcuts can improve one's productivity.

ShortCut	What it Does
F3	Open Declaration
CTRL + SPACE	Auto Complete
CTRL + D	Delete current Line
CTRL + G	Search for declaration in Workspace (after highligting a word)
CTRL + L	Jump to Line Number
CTRL + O	Quick Code Outline/ Structure
CTRL + T	Open Heirarchy
CTRL + E	Swicth Editor
CTRL + Q	Last Edit Location
CTRL + SHIFT + R	Open Resource
CTRL + SHIFT + I	Inspect (Evaluate an expression while in debug mode)
CTRL + SHIFT + P	Find matching brace
CTRL + SHIFT + L	Key Assist

Bonus Tip
Double clicking to the immediate right of an opening brace selects all the code between two braces.

Feel free to add any more shortcuts in the comments.

Aim of Google redesign

This post is my speculation on the aim for the latest Google navigation redesign.

The ugly black navigation bar at the top of the Google Home Page was pretty difficult to use with touch devices like smart phones or tablets. So this could be a reason for coming up with the App Launcher.

With the App Launcher, it becomes easy with a touch based interface to go to that application faster.

Its true that most of the buttons in Google applications are bigger and space around them so as to be easy to touch without having to worry about clicking on something else.

Buttons in Blogger

One more thing that I would like to add is the tabs in Google Image search, although they are just text the extra spacing between lets the user choose what they really want.

If you have any other views, feel free to add in the comments.