Google+ redesigned: New look, responsive, faster and leaner than ever before!

Google+ has been redesigned. Yes, it still exists. And no, it’s not giving up. Despite the rise and rise of Facebook and Twitter, and a plethora of other relatively unknown social networks, Google is taking another shot at its failed attempt at building a successful network. At first glance, it’s easy to miss what has gone into Google+ through the years. But considering that Facebook is working hard at monetising and increasing revenue streams via advertisers, and Twitter is struggling along the same lines, Google is leaving no stone unturned in reviving Google+. The world’s largest advertising company, with a specialisation in search, has announced in its official blog that it has redesigned the Google+ network to make it completely responsive. For those who aren’t aware, a responsive website is one that adapts itself to the screen on which you view its webpages. So if you access the website on a PC, it stretches out to the fullest to give you a comfortable viewing experience. Similarly, if you access it from your tablet, the website uses a refreshed interface that best captures the medium of touch for easy access. Similarly, on a mobile device, it shrinks itself but displays an interface that enables easy readability. In addition to the announcement that Google+ has gone responsive, Google has also announced the philosophy it adopted while redesigning the all new Google+. It spoke about a 6^5 principle. That’s referring to the number 6 across 5 metrics of performance. To begin with, no page on Google+ would download more than 60kb of HTML, JavaScript or CSS each. In a webpage, HTML determines the positioning and the barebones of each page, JavaScript adds in logic, interaction and intelligence, while CSS beautifies the page. Since each of these elements involve several lines of code that are constantly, there is constant data transfer happening that may not seem a lot on a desktop device with a stable internet connection. However, if you are on the mode on a choppy mobile data network, you would find the pages to be faster and leaner since minimal data would be exchanged between your device and Google’s servers. The result, an average Google+ page that used to take approximately 12 seconds to load would now load in 3 seconds. The metric, also known as latency, indicates that it used to take 0.7 seconds to download the first byte of data. Surprisingly, this has now been reduced to 0.1 seconds. Google has put out a performance improvement comparison video to highlight the improved page load time.

To access the revamped Google+, you need to hover on Home (on the top left of your screen), and then click on Settings. Scroll down to Settings, click on it and click on Manage Google+ activity. Once you click on Manage Google+ activity, simply click on the search bar and you should now have the new interface!