This post was published 9 years, 11 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.
Oh what a wonderful day it is! Google Plus has taken yet another giant leap into the world of Material Design with its latest update. It received a makeover several months ago which brought it close, however today’s update is the frosting on the cake we’ve all been waiting for. Not only are the new animations clear and beautiful, they are also smooth.
This update has also fixed several glitches I was having with the previous version of the app. For instance, if I was managing the Little Green Dude page and I received a notification on my personal account, clicking the notification would cause the app to crash. Although it has only been an hour or so since I updated, this circumstance has arisen several times already and I have yet to have the app crash.
Google+ Photos has also been updated, and now features a much sleeker and more streamlined design. There’s a beautiful animation of the three lined menu button into an arrow when you pull out the hamburger menu, and everything is running smoother as a whole.
Also, the notifications pullout area is no longer ridiculously oversized on tablets. It now covers just a sensible proportion of the screen so you can still see most of your stream. Overall it looks much better (as you can see below).
Finally, I’d like to note the updated icon. You’ll notice in the image below that it has a flatter design, closely resembling Moonshine. Secondly, it’s much smaller. It is now smaller than the Google Settings app, whereas it was the same size before. This is interesting, as some people are unhappy with the oversized icons on the Google Now Launcher. Perhaps this is a sign that Google will be scaling things down. The lack of constistancy is slightly annoying though so hopefully they are all evened out before the L release.
If you want to try out the new G+ design and don’t fancy waiting for the update to rollout to your device via the Play Store, you can download the APK here.
Are you as excited about Material Design as we are? Let us know down below, and remember that Little Green Dude is now available as a news source on Google Play Newsstand! Subscribe and add us to your Newsstand library here: http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwtGoogle.
