Google Plus Image Enhancements

Posted on by
1

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to vastly improve the way images are handled in your Google Plus stream.

By default Google Plus displays nice large thumbnails for any image in your stream, as seen in this screengrab :-

Default image display in Google Plus

The default image display mode in Google Plus

Although this looks nice, these larger images do take up a lot of space.

I’m going to show you a combination of Chrome browser extensions which will help you both save space and make image display even better.

The first extension is actually one I previously described in this post, called Stylish, which lets you almost completely customise how sites look in either Chrome or Firefox using themes.  In that first post I recommended installing Stylish and a theme called “Google+ – Compact stream, images scale on hover” (see the previous post for a link to the theme). With Stylish and that theme installed images appear as small thumbnails which expand back to the normal Google Plus default size when you hover your mouse over them. See the image below for to see an example of an image displayed as a thumbnail.

Images as thumbnails in Google Plus

Images changed to Thumbnails

And as I said above to see the image at the normal Google Plus size you just hover over it with you mouse.  I think you’ll agree that is an improvement over the default mode.

But there is more we can do to make images work better in our streams!

If look at the image above you’ll see text below the thumbnail that says “Show/Hide” and you’ll no doubt realise this doesn’t appear by default.  This is another function we can add with yet another extension.

You will need to download and install an extension called Golden View for Google+

Golden View has 5 (optionally enabled) modules which provide not only an image hiding function but also :-

  • User Mute – Lets you mute all posts by a particular user
  • Default Circle – Make any Circle your default instead of your Stream
  • Hide Comments – With an option to Hide All by default
  • Search with Google – Lets you search Google+ with Google

I’ll cover each of these functions in more detail in another post, but for now we’ll just go over the image handling feature.

Once you have installed the Golden View extension, go to your extensions page and make sure that it is activated, you’ll also see a link for options, click that to turn the various functions on or off and set the default behaviors for each function.   Don’t forget to refresh your browser to make the new extension active.   You will now see the option to show/hide images along with the other new features you may have enabled.

So now you should be able to completely hide your images, display them as small thumbnails when they are shown and make the images expand to their normal default size when you mouse-over them.

But there is one more improvement we can add still to go!

 Full Sized Image Zooming!!

Yes you read that right, there is an extension that lets you zoom images to their full size right from within your Stream!   The extension is called +Photo Zoom and can be installed from the Chrome Web Store at that link.

Once installed the extension adds a small icon on your Google Bar (see image below)

The arrow shows the new icon

This icon allows you to quickly toggle between ‘Zooming Mode On’ and ‘Zooming Mode Off’ You’ll want to toggle this as you may not always want your Stream images to blow up to full size.

With the extension active, when you mouse over an image it will zoom out to it’s full size as show in the image below.

Image Zooming in your Stream

So there you go, by installed Stylish, a new Google+ theme and 2 Google+ extensions you now have lots more control over how images are displayed in your theme, potentially saving you a ton of screen space but also letting you see images in their full glory!

I hope you find this tutorial useful, if you do please click the +1 button at the top of this article and consider following me on Google+!

Thanks!

Posting on Google Plus – Public and Private Messages

Posted on by
3

The messaging system on Google Plus is quite different to Facebook, instead of having a Wall to post things on you have your Stream, but unlike Facebook where everything you post to your wall is viewable by ALL your friends, with Google Plus you have infinitely more control over who see’s your messages (posts).

Google+ lets you define exactly who can read the things you post before you submit it, by choosing from a pop down list below the message or by typing a person’s name into the box below your message.

Options when posting a message

Public: anyone on Google+ can see it if they go to your profile.

Individual Circles: you select which ones and only the people in the circle or circles you choose can see the comment.

Your Circles: Goes to ALL your Circles not just selected ones.

Your Extended Circles: Visible to everyone in your circles, plus ALL the people in their circles.

Private messages

You can also write a Private Message by simply typing the name of the person (or person’s for ad hoc private group messages) into the add people box below your message.

If you look at the top of any comments, next to the name of the person who started it and the time, is a description of who can see it. It will say either Limited or Public – hovering over the word limited will show you who can see these messages.

Commenting and Sharing your messages

Another final option you have when you post something is to limit whether people can make comments on your post and perhaps more usefully, whether they can reshare the post with other people.  These options are accessed from the small icon in the top right corner of your messsage.

Your Stream full of – No longer seeing this post. Undo mute.

Posted on by
Reply

One of the most useful features on Google Plus for managing the noise in your stream (and believe me you’ll want to manage the noise once you start following a few people), is the ability to Mute a Post.

The Mute a Post function can be accessed from the ‘small inverted triangle in a circle icon’ at the top right of each post.  Clicking on this small icon will show a pop-down with the Mute function.

After you mute a post you’ll see this notice - No longer seeing this post. Undo mute.  Giving you a chance to change your mind about muting it.

But what happens if you have gone through the items in your stream and it looks like the picture below with loads of ‘No longer seeing this post. Undo mute.’ notices?   How do you quickly recover valuable screen real estate to view more posts ?

To make them disappear simply refresh your browser window.  It’s that easy.  I make it a habit to just tap the F5 key on my keyboard which does a screen refresh.   Do that and all the ‘No longer seeing this post. Undo mute’ notices will be cleared for you.

Using Stylish to change the appearance of Google Plus

Posted on by
Reply

One small criticism I’ve seen of Google Plus is that the interface has too much white space and doesn’t allow you to see much content at one time.  Well if you use Firefox or Chrome as your browser then there is a really neat solution to this.

There is a very clever add-on for both browsers called ‘Stylish‘ (click the link to visit the page and download the appropriate version for your browser).  Once you have Stylish installed you can then download ‘Themes’ for various websites including Google Plus and by installing these themes into Stylish you can completely change the appearance of Google Plus.

After you’ve installed Stylish, I recommend you install this theme which makes the Google Plus Stream more compact as well as adding a nice image scaling feature – Click here to download the theme.

You can download as many themes as you want and switch between them at any time with the Stylish Browser add-on, you can even use multiple themes at the same time in some cases.

Have fun playing with the appearance of Google Plus.

An easy way to remember and promote your Google Plus Profile

Posted on by
4

Since originally posting this tip I’ve discovered an even better way to do it, so this is an updated version.   I’ve left the original post and added the new method after it.  I recommend you use the new method but the old method is there if you want to do that instead.

The URL for my Google Plus profile page is this :-

https://plus.google.com/109750625377416110158/posts

Hardly what one could call easy to remember and rather difficult to tell someone if you want them to find you on Google’s new social network.

Much nicer is this shortened version – gplus.to/seanclarke

Simple go to http://www.gplus.to  type in the name you want and paste in the long number from your Google Plus profile page and it will create a nice short URL like mine.

Google will hopefully one day allow vanity URLs, but until they do gplus.to is a neat trick.

Updated version :  Someone pointed out to me that gplus.to is not an official Google website, therefore the possibility exists for whoever owns glus.to to one day redirect your shortened links to anywhere they want.   This is unfortunately quite possible and I’d hate to see my url (or yours) suddenly pointing at something nasty.

Don’t worry though there is a great solution, although not as pretty as the gplus.to method, it is certainly a lot safer and actually give you more features.  It turns out Google have their own official Google URL Shortener :-)

It’s at goo.gl and aside from creating nice short URLs – here is my Google Plus Profile shortened using it - goo.gl/9CQ4f     it also creates a nice QR Code for your link 

and provides you with some stats showing how many clicks your link is getting and where the clicks are coming from.

I think you’ll agree that’s a much nicer and safer option for promoting your Google Plus Profile.

The correct use of Enter or Shift-Enter when posting on Google Plus

Posted on by
2

When you are posting on Google Plus remember that pressing Enter or Shift Enter works a little differently to how you might expect after years of using Facebook.

In Facebook when you are entering a status update hitting the Enter key gives you a new line, to actually submit your update you have to actually click on the Share button to submit it.

However, when you are commenting on someone else’s status if you hit Enter, instead of a new line the text you’ve written so far gets published as if you’d finished. In that case if you wanted a new line you should have pressed Shift-Enter.

In fact in most cases when you are entering text (chatting for example) Enter will submit it and Shift-Enter will give you a new line.

Except in Google Plus.

With Google Plus when you are typing something on your stream hitting Enter will give you a new line the same as in Facebook, the big difference is that hitting Shift-Enter works the same as clicking the Save Button and will submit what you’ve typed.

Unlike Facebook the same rules apply when you are commenting on someone else’s stuff, Enter for a new line, Shift-Enter to submit (the same as clicking the Post Comment button).

Remember those minor differences when posting on Google Plus and you’ll hopefully save yourself from inadvertently posting stuff before you’ve finished typing it all up.