By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | September 25, 2011, 8:52am PDT
Summary: Google’s Chrome Web browser’s interface is getting a modest, but significant, makeover to make it more usable.
Chrome 14 is great, but the forthcoming
Chrome
15 looks like it will be even better. This release, which is now in
beta, boasts three new tab pages. These will make it easier to get to
your Chrome apps, most visited sites, and bookmarks.
The new
Chrome 15 tab pages
appear in three different sections on the bottom of all Web pages. You
can flip between these different sections by clicking the section labels
at the bottom of the page or by using the arrows at the side of the
page. When you open a new tab, Chrome will default to opening the last
tab page you had on.
It’s a simple change, but it’s one I’m already finding very useful.
In particular, I appreciate having one click access to my bookmarks. The
one change Chrome made to the traditional Web browser that I hadn’t
liked was the way it placed bookmarks under the wrench. This made going
to a bookmarked site, if it wasn’t one of my top sites, a three-step
operation. Now, even without a bookmark bar, I just have to make one
click and I’m able to browse my bookmarks. For me, this is a real change
for the better.
Chrome 14: Pretty and Fast. (Gallery)
Not everyone likes this change. A lot of people want a floating
bookmark bar, but I don’t see it myself. Google 15 still lets you have a
fixed bookmark bar, so I don’t get what all the fuss is about. That
said, I think Google needs to improve the bookmark tab’s looks. Still,
I’ve no doubt that Google will clean this up. This looks exactly like
the kind of cosmetic problem that you expect to see in a beta release.
The new tab pages also let you re-arrange apps on a page by dragging
and dropping them. An even better feature, if you have a lot of Chrome
apps, is that you can now create a new apps section by dragging an app
to the bottom of the page until a new apps section appears. You can then
name the section to something that works for you–Games for
Chrome Games; Work for Google Docs and Google Mail; Entertainment for
Google Music and YouTube and so on.
In addition, the JavaScript Fullscreen application programming
interface (API) is now enabled by default. This means just what it says.
You’ll be able to run some JavaScript applications as full-screen
applications.
Finally, the Omnibox History, a history of everything entered into
the Address/Search bar, can now be synced between Chrome browser
instances with
Google Sync This will let you sync your Chrome search history across multiple PCs and other devices.
The bottom-line is that the Chrome Web browser is continuing, ala
Chrome OS, to become an easy-to-user interface for anything that you
might want to do on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. I’m going to be
watching it closely to see where it goes from here.
Source:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/google-chrome-web-browser-to-get-a-makeover/1499
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