Google's background images

[hobwebs]

I see that Google now fills my screen with a nice photograph everytime I visit their home page.

I just wonder how much extra server load and bandwidth usage there is now considering the millions of people who probably have their homepage set to Google!

[penders]

Bing!

Well, the image should cache client side, but it seems to change every hour or so?! Not impressed by Google for doing this, particularly since you can't easily 'turn it off'! It has apparently been an option for a while to set a background image - but to make it mandatory is a bit of a bugger IMO.

[Malcolm]

I do not get an image!

[penders]

Curious... I don't get an image in Opera. Initially there was a link in the middle that said something like, "Curious about todays homepage? Set a background image". Clicked the link, nothing happened and now the link doesn't display.

Background image appears in IE8, Chrome and FF for me on Windows.

[Malcolm]

Perhaps Safari blocks it on my Mac

[penders]

On Safari 4 (Win) I don't get a background image either.

They seem to be using CSS text-shadow to create a bit more contrast between the (white) text and the background - which doesn't do anything for IE8.

[Malcolm]

I get an image in Firefox, clicking change background image crashes the browser

[dab]

I think it's using Java. In Firefox I don't get an image with noscript enabled, but if I allow scripts on Google the image displays. Opera doesn't dispay it for me either, so I assume it is being blocked by opera.

[penders]

I think it's using Java.

Javascript.

I don't see why (or even how) browsers would 'block' this. Only if the browser did not support it, or Google are targeting certain browsers in which they don't want it to display.

In fact if I change the User Agent in Safari to "Firefox 3.5.3 Windows" then the page displays in all its background-image glory. ...AH it's just crashed! - so that's why!

[dan90joe]

how do you change the useragent??? doesnt appear in Safari for me but does in FF