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Chrome 33 Nixes Option To Fall Back To Old 'New Tab' Page

Posted by timothy on from the put-it-on-my-ta-hey-waittaminute dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On Friday, Chrome 33 was shipped out the everyone on the stable channel. Among other things, it removes the developer flag to disable the "Instant Extended API", which powers an updated New Tab page. The new New Tab page receieved a large amount of backlash from users, particularly due to strange behavior when Google wasn't set as the default search engine. It also moves the apps section to a separate page and puts the button to reopen recently closed tabs in the Chrome menu. With the option to disable this change removed, there has been tremendous backlash on Google Chrome's official forum. The official suggestion from Google as well as OMG! Chrome is to try some New Tab page changing extensions, such as Replace New Tab, Modern New Tab Page, or iChrome."

9 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Should be a public API for this by Darkon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Doesn't help that the new tab page lives inside a protected "chrome://" namespace which extensions are almost entirely prevented from touching, and uses private APIs for things like showing the most used pages, meaning that anyone wanting to put it back how it was by writing an extension has to reimplement everything from scratch.

  2. Re:Chrome by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I open a new tab in chrome, and try to do a search in the search box, it shifts focus instantly to the url field.

    Can anyone tell me how to prevent this? It makes searching google using a url as the keyword a huge, ginormous pain in the ass, and it interferes with what I'm doing on pretty much a daily basis.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  3. Burning Chrome by kevlar_rat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So basically a successful company forced a new UI on their audience, ignoring a mountain of negative feedback, without really understanding the community?

    --
    Moderated Usenet
    1. Re:Burning Chrome by Max+Threshold · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's the Microsofting of Google.

    2. Re:Burning Chrome by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Alienating your users seems to be all the rage lately.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    3. Re:Burning Chrome by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Alienating your users seems to be all the rage lately.

      It's part of that whole "you're not the customer, you're the product" thing.
      I've never heard a meat-packing plant listen to the feedback from cows, either.

  4. Re:Chrome by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whoever thought it was a good design choice, shifting the focus halfway across the screen after the user explicitly put focus on the search box... I sure hope they're no longer working in IT. That was just gross incompetence.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  5. Re:Chrome by glavenoid · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ctrl+k puts focus in the omni/address bar with a "?" which tells chrome you want to search rather than go to a url. Alternatively, you can add the ? as the first character in the address/omibar and this will also initiate a search rather than going to the site.

    --
    I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable /. beta rollout fallout.
  6. Also in Chrome 33: Welcome to Walled Garden by kav2k · · Score: 4, Informative

    You think that's the real problem in Chrome 33?

    Well, compare that to this fact: on Chrome 33 on Windows (and Windows only) all non-Chrome-Web-Store extensions are forcibly disabled and will not install anymore, with the exception of pushing them through domain group policy.

    http://www.chromium.org/develo...

    So, say goodbye to anything not blessed by Google, like extensions that allow "the unauthorized download of streaming content or media".
    Unless you want to use the Dev channel as an official workaround, or are content with loading extensions unpacked, with no auto-update.

    It's not like I don't understand the problem, I've seen rampant Chrome crapware on clueless people's computers. But this is heavy-handed.