A few weeks ago, Google made a subtle change to their search results that most people probably didn’t notice. They implemented a max-width of 80em to their results div.
For the large majority of users, this is just fine, it forces the search results into a size that is proper for most monitors. However, I’m browsing on a 76 cm / 30 in monitor at home, and a 58 cm / 23 in monitor at the office. The pagination bar at the bottom and the results bar with the definition link in it used to appear right-aligned. I tend to browse full-screen, so if I needed to hit the definition link, it was a simple matter to just flick my mouse to the right of the screen. Then max-width was implemented, and now the link is hovering awkwardly in the middle of my screen.
Check out the before & after:
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- Results before max-width change
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- Results after max-width change
What I find particularly odd about this is that they didn’t implement a max-width for the Search Settings / Sign In section in the top right, that is still right-aligned regardless of browser width.
After a few days of using it, I found myself getting frustrated with the new change. So I fixed it.
It’s a simple, one-line change, available as a Greasemonkey Script or a Firefox Extension. Now results are a lot less annoying (for me at least).
Feel free to download either:
Enjoy!