Script Summary: Old-fashioned Google top and side bars and much more! Gives you a nice, soothing blue and white Google with none of the Christmas tree look of the 2011 redesign(s). Works with Google Instant, hides location data and special occasion/holiday logos in search results, turns Google black bar to white, widens search results column, and hides grey search results bar - all while displaying Result Stats, Safe Search links, Advanced Search link, and all other top-level links and information correctly. Also restores "cache" and "similar" links once missing from search results. v2.21 is out!
Version: 2.21
License: MIT License
Features
This script gives you "old Google" back - with a more modern look and feel. Works signed in or out on Google Search, Google Maps, Google Maps in-sidebar results, Google Translate, Google Accounts, Google Blogs, Google Images, Google Video, Google Offers, Google Shopping, Google Products, Google News, Google Books, Google Discussions, Google Recipes, Google Plus, Google Plus in-sidebar results, Google Finance, Google Patents, Google Applications, Google Scholar, Google Support, and with Google Instant. Limited (navbar-only) support for many other Google page views as well (such as Google Play, Google Groups and much more).
Also works in Google Chrome if you install this first: Blank Canvas Script Handler
Screenshot (updated 4-17-12)
More Screen Shots
Google Bar Classic - Redone! v2.21, 4-1-2012 - a few signed-in and signed-out views at 1024 x 768 and 1440 x 900 (updated 4-17-12)Updates
11-21-11 and 11-22-11- old-fashioned Google bars now show up for logged-in users on all page views - updating this line from the future (4-2-12 - the script now supports, at least at a basic level, every page of Google that I know of, signed in or out)
- "cache" and "similar" links are back in search results
- search results column is now over 500px wide (Google keeps narrowing it; my code should stop that for now)
- preview pane lines up properly with organic results
- right-hand ad column clears correctly for ad-viewers
- Safe Search link now displays correctly
- stock-tickers in organic search results redone more to how they were before Google's design update this week
- re-positions bottom-of-the-page page links
- fixes some broken display elements in Google Maps
- corrects cached/similar link spacing
- sets transparency on preview tab hover
- fixes button alignment on Images home page
- fixes location drop-down text and arrow alignment on Google Offers
- adds top border to preview pane
- restores one line of code I took out weeks ago in anticipation of Google's switch to a dropdown menu, which, as of 2-2012, has been indefinitely tabled
- hides new Google Privacy Policy Update nag and an ad on google.com to switch you over to Chrome - to see nag and ad, delete the last line of CSS (not the last line of code - if you don't know the difference, leave this alone)
- knocks out what I call pino's bug - where, on a res wider than 1024 x 768, the top of the page breaks and/or displays oddly
- accounts for Google fixing broken/misplaced elements in Maps and bottom-of-the-page page links by stripping out some of my code
- ResultStats now displays correctly at any res
- SafeSearch hasn't displayed correctly without a background and border; now has both
- On Google's "drop image here" search results page, the border is missing from the bottom half of the search box without my script installed; adds missing border
- uploaded new version by mistake; reverted within minutes
- Google had extra padding on search box/Google Suggest; removed in latest version
- v2.21 created (but not officially released until 3-19) to account for Google's latest update to their design - you can read about the changes Google has made here: http://marahmarie.dreamwidth.org/128289.html - and if for some reason, the last version works better for you than v2.21 does, you can still get it here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/version/113067/4...
- v2.21 fixes various bits of page-breakage caused by update, such as blue background image repeating across top of search results page (screenshot of this uploaded by an affected user is here: http://imgur.com/Vgb9S)
- my code inserted extra padding on "drop image to search" search box on the "drop image to search" results pages; fixed in latest version
- fixed crowded image result divs on same pages
- fixed misaligned top left buttons on Google Maps (this is a fix I might re-visit, but seems good enough for now)
- fixed misaligned text on Google Offers popup button
- the top buttons on search results pages were sometimes crashing into each other on re-sized screens; made them stop crashing
- unveiled a few previously hidden appbar elements to show hidden buttons on Google News and Google Finance pages
- doing the above made Google Finance look funny; adjusted title positioning to resolve issues
- prettified Google Finance link lists and titles
- other minor fixes/improvements (dozens since mid-Feb. 2012, probably too many to recall or explain here)
- Added code for Google Support, Google Play and a few more touches of code to support Google Accounts (for most signed-in page views you'll encounter)
- (OK, so I'm really excited about this update, y'all...)
- Knocks out a number of bugs I didn't know this script had because I almost never sign into Google - and two bugs I was unaware of until last week that affects all users, signed in or not - all described below - also adds new features for better usability for signed-in users
- sets correct column clears for 1024 x 768 res on down
- fixes line-height error that affected various buttons across all Google sites
- fixes all various bits of page-breakage caused by Google's design update, such as blue background image repeating across top of Gmail page (screenshot of this uploaded by an affected user is here: http://imgur.com/Vgb9S)
- fixes hidden "GMail" link on GMail page
- fixes black text on GMail "More" dropdown
- moves an entire set of buttons for signed-in users to top right corner of page (where Google likes to stick them anyway, but only on some page views - this update sticks them up there on all page views) - this has a bug where once you re-size, you may have to refresh for buttons to clear, depending on which page of Google you're on
- re-aligns/re-positions Safe Search and Personal Results Show/Hide buttons to clear search bar at all re-sized dimensions - this also has a bug where once you re-size, you may have to refresh for buttons to clear, depending on which page of Google you're on
- other minor fixes/improvements
- reset positioning on logged-in button bars
- on hover/select, certain elements of dropdown bars for logged-in users were covered with a long grey box (probably an issue with z-index for #gbu that I don't feel like fixing) - using other methods, made grey box disappear
- fixed transparency issues on same dropdowns
- on same dropdowns, scroll was disabled on G+ updates and clickable elements were unclickable - fixed
- on same dropdown, you were not able to type in Update box - fixed
- in white Google bar along top of page, hid "Play" link and "NEW" logo to clear #gbu (that is, logged-in buttons for Profile, G+ and GMail) and for aesthetics - also, I think of this link as an inline ad, which I don't support in my script (see 1-12-12 update for more hidden inline ads)
- in same top bar, Google now changes its height depending on what page you're on, so on Maps and other page views it gets narrower and links bounce around, sitting too low or high - added code to make this issue go away
- in same top bar, active link background color (light blue) was showing up twice on any page besides Search - now shows up just on the page you're on
- on same dropdown, owing to bad hover code on "More" menu, 1024 x 768 users saw a scrollbar - reset hover width and tada, scrollbar's gone
- on Google Maps, the panel arrow was too high - removed one line of code
- somehow (don't know know how many updates back this happened, but I think it's been a while) the search bar got very long (572px) - reset to original width
- some variances in my code caused left nav and results to not match height - fixed
- search results column line height caused some inline buttons (like author links in Books results) to display incorrectly - added correct line-height
- other minor fixes/improvements
- fixed more line-height issues for buttons that link to names on Google+
- Google set their main logo lower than usual; adjusted it
- on Maps, logo sat too far left (from something in my code); also got adjusted
- on at least one signed-in page (Google Plus Notifications) the user icon was popping out of the top bar - turns out Google displays (and also hides) multiple images for that (what you're actually seeing is a multi-image overlay, which for some reason wasn't overlaying correctly ) - fixed
- since I was fixing the image display, decided to adjust the height (the image was off by two pixels)
- took out several dead lines of code - dead in the sense they don't do anything where maybe they used to - I'm trying to work out enough time to remove more that I think are just as dead, an update which I'll likely combine with the "organizing" update I keep going on about
- Some of those dead lines got replaced with living code but some don't need replacing, a pattern which will likely repeat since Google and I seem to keep fixing code that I went after earlier in this script's life
- other minor improvements/fixes
- made moar pretty - added a tiny bit of code to remove grey backgrounds around search box on previously neglected pages - yeah, I know...*shrug*
- last night's "Google icon popping out" issue came up again today; added more code to (hopefully) knock it out no matter what Google Plus page you're on
- last night's line height fix for buttons involves two steps; added second step
- Google moved the main page logo again. On 1440 x 900 it looked OK, but on 1024 x 768 or below my script produced a peekaboo effect on the image sprite in question. Fixed the peekaboo effect and disabled holiday/special occasion logos while I was at it (which includes background positioning effects on Maps and Finance to keep the logo from crashing into other things).
- in trying to get my script ready for updated screen shots, played whack-a-mole with logo positioning on various Google pages. My gold standard for how the whole page should look is this (which is a screen taken from an earlier version of this script), and while I've gotten away from that a little - only by necessity, since Google's literally removed some elements the page used to have - overall I'm trying to keep what you see as close to that as I can. I'm also not happy with the logo on Maps or Google Plus so there may (or may not) be more updates to address that.
- Google did an extremely odd thing in adding today's special occasion logo: they created a new ID to hold it - #gbqld - styled with JS, and reversed - perhaps just for today - the order of an ID and class that holds it, so instead of it laying out as .gbt#gbq1, it lays out now as #gbq1.gbt. Which of course ran the logo 9 pixels off the page on any 1024 x 768 screen. So I added one line of code to work around this, um, oddity, that I'll probably remove tomorrow if Google reverts back to their original HTML flow.
- above change was a one-day thing to get their special logo positioned - apparently when it's very small, like that one was, they're all too willing to do anything - including re-arrange the HTML - to make it work. You'd think they'd just add a special ID and some classes to the permanent styling of the page for when it's time to switch to another stupid one-day logo. But far be it from me to suggest how Google could be more professional in their approach to CSS.
- ...false alarm on the warning I issued late last night about Google adding new HTML - in fact, they added just one new ID that affects this script - to force a page-wide grey border under the appbar. Maybe they're just checking to see if anyone's awake...but I am! In fixing this, I forgot a closing bracket and broke the entire script, which made me think the damage they did was much worse. Whew.
- I'm pretty sure I knocked out the black-on-hover bug that's haunted this script since Day One. Now that that's fixed, you'll see light blue on everything you hover on in the top bar.
- update in progress....
- ...and after waging WW III with Google's new HTML stack, I emerge worse for the wear - but ahem, winnning. It was such a stupid error on my part, really. After they changed crap around in the #appbar I just needed to move where to hide the bottom-border, where to eliminate height, and to set the damn z-index to 0. Only took me about 22,365 attempts to figure that out.
- minor adjustment to one floating menu position
- adjusted some bottom of the page stuff/scrapped some related code
- set link-visited color to something besides purple (actually a color from my Google user-icon, slightly modified to reduce glare) - removed !important later on
- Google's little floating +1 icon beside results was making blank spaces here and there; fixed - while I was at it I widened search results again - slightly - but I believe I had them narrower to prevent collision with site previews, so I might adjust this again in the future
- Google changed HTML to force a link to Play in top navbar so I hid it again
- zeroing out #appbar z-index screwed up z-index on floating dropdown above Image results - fixed
- restoring z-index on Images #appbar screwed up "related" Image links along top of page; to fix I set #appbar inline for now, but I might work up something better in the future - added ":first-of-type" later on to solve another problem caused by inlining
- after a number of updates tonight, the script got unlisted; emailed admin(s) to see what's up - hoping it only got unlisted by mistake
- Well, *that* was quick. After two weeks and one false hope via a site admin's PM that the script was in fact relisted, I emailed the admins again about ten minutes ago at an email address that actually works (the first address I tried, which I got from I don't know where, didn't) then it seemed I just barely hit Send and the script was up and running again. I actually got whiplash from that.
- I may or may not put up another update for this script. I don't really feel like working on it but I see it has some issues since last time 'round (with the dropdown menu, mostly - Google's playing with the secret sauce again), and I'm not sure I like the visited color on links, so I may take that out along with whatever else is annoying me. I'm not sure exactly what that would be, since I've been using Start Page ever since my script got taken off GM listings.
- OK, I thought I didn't feel like getting into this tonight, but once I start, sometimes I can't stop...
- fixed horizontal scroll at bottom of top navbar dropdown menu
- messed with floating menu position - again
- figured out how Google might be running test designs - by using the "gstyle" tag to pump in mostly "nojsv" elements that are also found when you run Google without any Javacript. It kind of stuns me to think no-Javascript results are the official hotbed for new designs, but stranger things have happened - I guess, right? My other theory is you get "nojsv" elements in the design (such as the truncated amount of links in the navbar that I screen-capped previously (http://i.imgur.com/yJq77.png, http://i.imgur.com/JizGf.png, http://i.imgur.com/rqKRJ.png, http://i.imgur.com/orYTD.png) even with JS enabled if your connection is slow (like mine is most of the time). So this might not be a new design at all that I'm seeing, but merely an alternate for those of us on slower connections. Either way, I've made some changes that take both the current design and the other one that seems to get randomly pumped through the "gstyle" tag into account with tonight's update.
- Hiding things annoys me. So tonight I was cruising Google when it occurred to me, why am I hiding the top floating menu bar on Maps? It annoyed me enough that I'm not hiding it on any page now.
- changed the Google gear button from black to blue to better match my design - ah, true eye relief
- fixed some z-index issues that were screwing up second floating menu bar and Personal result images/links beneath search box. Still one z-index issue remaining at 1024 x 768 and below; when any element with a fixed position in the sidebar (like a map, G+ results or possibly an ad) is present second floating bar will hide behind said element. I may untangle that eventually. :)
- fly-open site previews you see in the sidebars had a mismatched border color and needed repositioning after z-index adjustments I made last time around
- some floating menu dropdown lists had a mis-matched grey background behind certain links - fixed
- Other very minor improvements/fixes
- On "drop image here" search results some the top of the page results/links were unclickable - fixed
- screwed up body class selector with last night's fix - fixed
- redid #appbar to knock out Advanced Link Broken bug (http://userscripts.org/topics/112411) - needs to be checked against more page views (so far all I've noticed is the Images results page has a bigger gap under the search box now, which I can definitely fix with my next update) - as an added bonus, this fix also knocks out another bug (with the z-indexing) on the same dropdown
Known Issues for v.2.21 as of May 2012
- Google has de-linkified logo in top left corner of search results; unresolved as of 5-2012
- top bar "freezes" for some of you (with two users reporting in Jan./April, one by email) - unresolved as of 5-2012
a black hover color on "More" link in top bar might show up - this seems to be due, as far as I can tell, to Google testing yet another design update out on some of us, yes, aren't we lucky - unresolved as of 4-13-12
fixed as of 4-25-12!- Google is running an alternate design that you can see in action if you 1) disable JavaScript on regular search results, 2) visit Google Play or 3) peruse "drop image here" search results. This is not an exhaustive list of pages the new design is live on. It will also randomly show up as the new design on regular, JavaScript enabled search results. Owing to pure luck and other factors (Google is using new HTML on the alternate that I can easily manipulate) I've been able to re-write this script to manage both designs at once - unresolved issues as of 5-2012 include slight logo mispositioning (owing to an alternate HTML tag used on it that I need to check against other page views for problems with repositioning), major mispositioning of the top white navbar, smaller than usual images in the top right floating bar and a shortened amount of links in top white navbar when viewing the alternate design.
SafeSearch dropdown on result pages will hide behind certain positioned elements in sidebar at 1024 x 768 and below - unresolved as of 5-2012- fixed as of 5-26-12!The last three SafeSearch dropdown links won't work at certain (currently unknown) screen res sizes ranging between 1440 x 900 and 800 x 600. Thanks to Morten79 for the heads-up, since apparently it's been going on for a while - as a workaround, you can set your screen res to exactly 1440 x 900 or 800 x 600 and the dropdown will work again - you can also check for ranges between those two screen resolutions that will work - this has got to be the weirdest bug ever) - unresolved as of 5-2012- fixed as of 5-26-12!- script needs re-organizing and many of the !important declarations need to be removed - unresolved as of 5-2012
Help me out?
I'm looking for screen shots of Google Bar Classic Redone in use on any/all Google sites it works on at resolutions wider than 1440 x 900 so I can check for and try to fix any issues. If you're a fan and want to help out please submit your screens using the contact info listed below - thanks! I'm also looking for any and all bug reports - post them anywhere, anytime, send them by email, PM me...thanks.
How to contact me...
I like feedback and really want to hear from you, so use the Issues page if you want, but that page is becoming a hard-to-read mess, so I'd vastly prefer it if you hit the forum (politely, please - this site has already deleted one user's comments from my forum for being less than civil) or my review page to let me know about any issues you're having or any script breakdowns.
I'd also vastly prefer an email over a private message because I only log in to update my scripts, so I may miss your message or not reply to you in a timely fashion. Hit me up at marahmarie a/t rocketmail .dotcom for a more timely response.
If you're submitting a bug report or issue...
I need all the information you can give me, and for you to remember I make this script as a hobby and use it for my own pleasure so I may be willing to live with bugs that you're not (especially because I try not to ever sign into Google, while maybe you try not to ever sign out). You're always free to use other scripts that match your needs better.
Submit bug reports/issues this way for a fast and polite response:
- Script version/update number (for example: "v2.21/update 48")
- How long you've been having the issue, since I often update many times a day, and will sometimes fix an issue before you can even mention it
- Browser version (for example: "Firefox 12.0" or "Firefox 10.9")
- What the issue is - please be as precise as possible; include or link to screen shots if applicable, and explain exactly what part of the page isn't working (for example: "the white Google bar along the top") when you do exactly what thing (for example: "when I click the links in that bar, nothing happens!").
- Bonus points if you can also tell me a) what page the problem happens on (for example: "the results page" or "on all pages I've checked: Maps, Images, Blogs") and b) if the problem happens on some pages but not on others (super-valuable info simply because Google varies what sort of code they use on many pages)
Troubleshooting
- please use only the latest version of this script - running v2.2 and v2.21 together is like running two different scripts at once (which address two different Google page designs, at that!) - it will mess up your Google entirely - so uninstall older versions before using the latest
- keep in mind that other people's userscripts that work on Google via CSS inserted through JS - like mine - might cause mine to fail or have problems; the same applies to Firefox add-ons designed to work on the design of any Google page out there (this can happen in reverse, too) so before doing anything else to troubleshoot, please disable any Google-related scripts and add-ons (for instance, OptimizeGoogle, an add-on that's no longer updated, will cause you to have issues with this script if you set it to display links to other sites) to see if that solves the problem you're having
