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Filed under: Design, Developer, Internet, Productivity, Google, Beta, Search

SearchMash now comes in Flash flavour

SearchMash now comes in Flash flavour
After quietly launching SearchMash as a test ground for all things search late last year, Google is making the site a bit more Flashy.

SearchMash is a playground of sorts for Google to experiment with interaction and the display of search results. Now they have taken their simple search philosophy to the limits and added in a Flash interface for a more interactive look at results.

The new interface uses Snap previews of websites before they are visited and tabs that seamlessly switch between web, image and video searches. Keyboard shortcuts and mouse scroll wheel interactions have also been put into place for quicker navigation. A list of recent searches is conveniently hidden on the left side, with a portion of a window slightly sticking out. When moused over, a tray slides out and display the keywords. Not the best placement and surely not something that the average user would know where to mouse over. Then again, we have to pinch ourselves because this is after all just a test search interface for Google to play around with. Of course the HTML version of the site is still available if you aren't inclined to search with Flash.

What do you think of this little Google experiment. Would Flash interfaces fly for search efforts in the real world?

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