Google have announced a full redesign of the UI for Google+.

Official blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/toward-simpler-more-beautiful-google.html

Rolling out over the next few days.

I havent got it yet.

An interesting comment

<blockquote>normal desing standard says width of 980px for a web page which G+ have implemented but from the left side, not from center.
</blockquote>

hence there is no wateage of white space.

from http://forum.gtricks.com/discussion/318/google-redesign/p1

I got it late yesterday, first impression; very nice!
I wouldn't have said there was much wrong with the old design, but it's nice to see that they are trying out new ideas.

I don't have a problem with the whitespace. Admittedly it's a bit odd that it's there, but it doesn't affect the functionality or look of the site.

Nothing wrong with whitespace, and definitely better than overlong text lines. They can even get rid of the hangout and chat features on the right (and move them to the left) for me, but perhaps most others prefer them there.

I do find the comment text (dark gray on light gray) too much fading in with the background, though.

Phillip, where have you been for so long?

I've worked out what they're doing. I was curious, so I borrowed my sister's tablet (a Dell Inspiron Duo), and headed to Google+.

The icons down the left hand side are perfect for tapping with you're left thumb at the edge of the screen. The white space leaves enough room to scroll with one of your right hand fingers, without covering any content.

If you look around, a lot of the buttons are now more "touch friendly", most obviously +1, reply, hangout [on a post], settings, start hang out [above chat].

And as others on Google+ have pointed out (seen quite a few examples of monitors turned), it works beautifully in portrait mode.

If you visit Facebook on the same tablet (even if you change Chrome's user agent to an iPad), you get the default desktop interface which is quite hard to use.

Coming up with an interface that suits desktop and touch seems to be difficult for some companies (*cough*Metro), but Google seem to have done a good job here.

Ryan, I'm checking the forum regularly to read along and delete spam :) My projects are listed at http://outer-court.com , that's the stuff I'm working on...