11 comments

  • David BachmannDavid Bachmann, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    I'm curious what other designers think of Material Design. I find it so bleaghh but feel like I'm in the minority. Maybe it's a Apple vs Android kinda thing.

    7 points
    • Andy MerskinAndy Merskin, over 7 years ago

      It's funny, I'm a bit on the opposite side where I think iOS's design principles are generally kind of bleaghh, albeit visually appealing.

      To preface, I am an avid Android user and have been since Froyo (2.2), so I’ve had a chance to see the platform evolve a LOT.

      What’s appealing to me about Material is how flexible it is. Google's given us a pretty large library of components with very clear guidelines, and encourages designers to break them to some degree (good example: Evernote).

      Overall, everything feels much more visually consistent. It can sometimes come off a bit drab, or too uniform. It really depends on the execution. It sounds cliche, but there’s a great sense of delight that Material conveys. Everything about using my Nexus phone is fun. Pulling down the notification drawer; switching apps; viewing and scrolling through content as it shifts and transforms based on the context all just feel so good!

      Where I’d like to see more of it used (and broken much more) is on the web in other apps apart from Google’s own.

      2 points
      • Matt KelshMatt Kelsh, over 7 years ago

        It's funny, I'm a bit on the opposite side where I think iOS's design principles are generally kind of bleaghh, albeit visually appealing.

        Redesigning a desktop app with a mobile design ideal is a bit odd though, don't ya think? This isn't android vs iOS design. It's "Should a design guide for mobile apps be applied to desktop apps regardless of platform?"

        In this case, i would argue no. OS X and Windows both utilise zero Material Design traits and it serves only to confuse users on each platform.

        0 points
    • Ed AdamsEd Adams, over 7 years ago

      My thoughts on Material Design are that it's okay for Google and apps on Android, I don't love some of the design choices it has but some stuff like the use of bright colours and the fact that Roboto is a gorgeous font sell me on it. I'm interested in seeing how it matures with regard to its principle of "meaningful animation". I would like very much to see where that goes. Overall it is solid and consistent enough to provide Google's many products with a consistent visual design style and that's awesome.

      I am however of the opinion that non-Google products and apps not on Android shouldn't use it because I don't think that's what it was designed for. It is potentially harmful as it could mislead the layperson into thinking a non-Google thing is a Google thing.

      I almost wish Google had created it as a closed off thing and declared it for internal use only.

      0 points
    • Ix TechauIx Techau, over 7 years ago

      Completely agree, I don't see what the fuzz is about to be honest. In my opinion it already looks outdated.

      0 points
  • A. M. ­DouglasA. M. ­Douglas, over 7 years ago

    I was momentarily perplexed, until I remembered that I run the development edition with the command line flags for these features. I've had Material Design elements for months.

    I think it looks a lot nicer with them but I still think there's some room for improvement. Sometimes I wish Chrome had the same UI customisability that Firefox offers.

    There was a browser called Breach in development which might have enabled this. Unfortunately their website has been down for a while now, and I suspect development has ceased.

    1 point
    • Johannes Siipola, over 7 years ago

      You might want to check out Vivaldi, a spiritual successor to Opera made by some former Opera devs. It uses the WebKit engine and has pretty good customization options.

      1 point
      • A. M. ­DouglasA. M. ­Douglas, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

        I neglected to make it clear that I do not approve of browsers being built on top of Node.js/Node-WebKit. The boot-up time and memory-usage was hilarious when I last tried out Vivaldi.

        I tried Vivaldi in 2014 and 2015 I think. I failed to see the point of the project. The selling point seemed to be that the address bar would change color to match the website you were browsing...

        I used to care about customisation. I used to use Slackware Linux along with a barebones tiling window system and a micro-browser like surf or luakit. I don't have time for that sort of thing these days, so being able to make minor tweaks is unappealing.

        0 points
  • Tony GinesTony Gines, over 7 years ago

    I assume it will come to Chrome Canary first, and so far (it being on v 50.0), it looks the same as the stable public version.

    0 points
    • Chris ColemanChris Coleman, over 7 years ago

      The changes are starting to trickle in Canary 50. Things like the responsive tools have been getting updated visuals in recent nightlies.

      0 points
  • Dan CortesDan Cortes, over 7 years ago

    Yesss, I love this. I'm a big fan of the flat/material aesthetic, especially when I want an application to get out of the way—which is usually what I want the browser to do.

    Also, kind of unrelated, but the DevTools Author extension flattens out the dev tools a bit and makes code a little more readable.

    0 points