Get Rid of Left Navigation in iGoogle
One of the things that is funny about our blog “Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More”, is the fact the “more” in the title gets ignored. Today we hope to earn our stripes on the “more”. If you are a user of iGoogle, you may have noticed the canvas view has now been rolled out to all users. This is the technical name of Google’s left navigation many have come to hate. None of the hacks using a variation of the iGoogle address work anymore (http://www.google.com/ig?gl=all or http://www.google.com/ig?hl=all). Furthermore, as Google has rolled this out to all regions, there has been an upheaval of anger. But have no fear, we have the solutions for you:
- In Mozilla, you will need to download Greasemonkey and install this wonderful userscript created by Rob Van Dam.
- In Chrome, if you have extensions enabled, we have created an extension to allow you to have top navigation in iGoogle. It is based on the work of Rob Van Dam.
- In Internet Explorer, you just need to drag Google Tab Killer bookmarklet to your favourites bar. It’s not a permanent soultion, but it will get rid of the left navigation on click.
In the end, we hope Google listens to obvious hatred of left navigation, but right now this seems to not be the case. As noted by a Google Employee in the forums:
“Why does iGoogle include a left-side navigation? Why isn’t it optional?
The left navigation isn’t optional because it’s an important part of iGoogle’s new features. First, it provides a scalable way to quickly navigate between gadgets that are in full-screen mode — and full-screen mode is something we made based on user feedback asking for bigger screen territory for gadgets. Secondly, the left navigation provides a home for new iGoogle features, the first of which is the integrated chat (and there are more in the works).”
We hope our solutions allow you to still enjoy iGoogle. Its a pity to need to use a “hack” to have your Google your way, but it is still the best, most secure/flexible start page out there.
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Hey, thanks for the link to my piece about the whole top vs. left tabs debacle. My post is a little over a year old from when they first rolled it out, and most of the easier hacks used to work. In the past couple days since they blocked the country code hack my traffic has shot through the roof as almost 1000 people per day have been landing on that blog post. That’s lots of ticked off people.
I really don’t understand Google’s hard nosed approach to this. Mouseover drop down menus could serve the exact same purpose if it was OPTIONAL. Those with bigger screens could take advantage of some of the added features like the chat box. Those without a wide screen and opted for tabs on top are not really missing that much if a few feature were not visible.
I’ve got a wide enough screen that I’ve gotten used to the tabs on the side, but I would still rather have them up top.
Hi Stever, even though it is a year old, I think up to now acceptance could be avoided. The issue, as you point out, is all the loopholes are closed. I think this could really get ugly, if it hasn’t already, but Google seems to be holding firm. I still think that iGoogle is still the best start page. Nevertheless, it is irksome that a “custom” start page lacks flexibility over navigation that is easily hacked by small scripts. If Bing were smart, they would clone iGoogle classic and gain a massive amount of users. Should be interesting to see what happens…
I finally bit the bullet and left iGoogle. I always used the hacks, but the loss of real estate on the left just doesn’t work for me on a small laptop.
Another thing I noticed, but have only a few times seen mentioned, the top paned iGoogle vs. left paned treat gMail differently. The old opened messages in a new tab while the new opens them in the current tab. Also, when doing this you don’t get the full “gMail” interface, but instead a combo igoogle / gmail. Before google products were basically my one stop shop for “internetting”, but that was when it was the best solution.
Hi Nick,
I agree with the sentiments. My concern is one of security. I am sure Netvibes, Pageflakes, etc make a good product, but I am not sure I want to give them my Gmail password. It is unfortunate Google is ignoring their customers. I understand why they are doing it, but for some (like myself) iGoogle is a place to get a glance at the news from my favorite feeds. It does the best job at this compared to yahoo or MSN. I am also not a big user of gadgets or Google Talk, and would not cry if these were gone. The changes they made upset me, because I suspect the majority of the users feel the same way. Nevertheless, I find the hacks listed above work pretty well and they are better then trusting my security to lesser known companies.
I wrote an addon for Firefox that hides the left tabs, makes them available via a hover menu, and can reduce the size of a header.
It can be found here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10113
Enjoy!
If you use the Adblock Plus extension with Firefox, add this filter to Adblock: google.com#TD(class=leftborder) Worked for me. Killed the left sidebar. I’d like to give credit where credit is due, but I can’t remember where I found this.
And I’m back to igoogle. At some point recently, the gmail widget added the option to open mail in gmail rather than igoogle on click and that w/ the left bar blocker has it acting like it used to / should.
I’ve been a big Google fan over the last 5 years, but I’m rapidly reaching the conclusion that they’ve lost the plot. In the last few months, they have imposed the horrible left-hand menu, the pointless updates ability (which none of my friends use), and the chat option (already have Gtalk so that’s a duplicate, thanks). In addition, in Gmail, they have imposed the Task menu (don’t use that either), and Wave (no-one cares), and the ill-fated, D.O.A., Buzz, which I have already turned off as no-one will use it (except excited Google employees). They should get back to basics. Everyone liked Google when they were simple, *because* they were simple. Microsoft in disguise now if you ask me. And the whole invite only thing to Wave was really dumb. I ain’t that bothered. Now to find a good replacement for iGoogle. Any suggestions?
I agree with your comments for the most part. Getting too far from search is an issue. They keep messing up the secret sauce. As for alternatives to iGoogle there are a few, but in our view, even with it’s flaws iGoogle is still the best and most trustworthy site.
Well, I suppose I had a bit of rant the other day, and it’s good to see they are getting involved with the infrastructure roll-out. Haven’t left iGoogle just yet, but still frustrated with them.
Has anybody found a way to eliminate the iGoogle side tabs (“canvas view”) in Safari?