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Google Gets Rid Of App Launcher In Chrome 52, Browser's Mac Client Gets Material Design (9to5mac.com)
Google has finally removed App Launcher that it bundles with the Chrome browser for Windows and Mac with the release of Chrome v52. The Mac client, in addition, now embraces Google's Material Design approach, and comes with new icons and flatter and transparent interface. 9to5Mac documents more changes on Chrome for Mac and Windows: Besides a new flatter, sharper, and transparent design, Material is also a "huge engineering feat," especially for Chrome OS and Windows. Chrome is "now rendered fully programmatically including iconography, effectively removing the ~1200 png assets we were maintaining before," Google noted. "It also allows us to deliver a better rendering for a wide range of PPI configuration."
Great, when this comes to Windows it will finally will scale the Chrome window on a high DPI (what Apple calls ''Retina'') display without making the icons get blurry since it's being scaled programmatically instead of just stretching a PNG asset.
Material design and macs don't mix. While chrome's material design looks just fine on my nexus, it just looks awful on my computer.
in the material world.
#DeleteChrome
So you can't see anything, you can't find anything and you can't do anything, except by accident - and only if it's not what you wanted to do.
But fuck all of that, it doesn't look cluttered because everything is within a plain glass squint of mid-grey. Yay! Chocamochackacockasuckalattes all round! WITH SPRINKLES!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Fuck them in their stupid faces for removing the back one page in history shortcut from backspace.
I think I'm one of the few people who actually used the app launcher. I still use it daily. Hoping someone releases a decent replacement (that is a little faster than the original)
Because my employer is well behind the times, I have a standard three button mouse in the office that doesn't have back/forward buttons that I use at home. Instead of being able to mash the large "Backspace" button with whatever digits I prefer when I want to go back a page, I now have to delicately press both Alt and Left Arrow buttons at the same time with my right hand which I have to take off the mouse.
Lots of discussion when this was first posted: Google Chrome To Disallow Backspace As a 'Back' Button
This is basically something that was cool in, say 2004? I suppose this is the level of innovation we can expect from google.
# make clean sig
Try this out for yourself. Get a piece of paper and a pen. Draw a large curve across the paper. You've just executed the programmatic function draw_curve().
Compare that to what it looks like when you enlarge a bitmap which has a few pixels roughly approximating a curve.
> Whether you call it stretching or scaling, you're still enlarging a bitmap
It's NOT enlarging a bitmap (or doesn't have to be). It's *drawing* the object at the appropriate size. The graphics libraries have functions like draw_curve().
Google "vector graphics". Drawing a line at a 20 degree angle does not result in the same pixels as scaling up a smaller bitmap which also approximates a 20 degree line. It is the same at 0, 45, and 90 degrees.
Yep, it seems to work fine for nobility.
All they need is a simple settings option which lets you change how you want the app to appear. Material design, Windows 8 Tiles, Windows 7 Aero, bubbly Windows XP, rounded corners Mac OS, do you want drop shadows or not, whatever. There is absolutely nothing preventing Microsoft / Google / Apple / etc. from letting the user pick how they want their computer desktop to look. The computer doesn't know the difference. To it, it's just a window with graphical elements overlaid on top of it.
It's like the designers at these companies are on a power trip, deriving satisfaction from knowing they can force everyone to bend to their will.
This version crashed seriously with 3D hardware acceleration enabled on linux. In chrome 51, 3d hardware acceleration worked fine. :(
What changed I wonder?
When the summary says "removing the ~1200 png assets we were maintaining before", that means they got rid of the PNGs. In other words, now they are NOT using png anymore. You fool.
Chrome is "now rendered fully programmatically including iconography, effectively removing the ~1200 png assets we were maintaining before,"
This is dumb. Utterly dumb. What they should have done is used vector assets, such as PDF, or if that's too "non-Google" for them, SVG or anything similar. Coding images doesn't make sense - you have to maintain that code and it's a complex effort for anyone to alter what's rendered. Compare that with simply swapping out a resource created in a vector art program.
Forcing the material design on Mac users is equally dumb, there's no point making the browser consistent with other platforms the users isn't likely using, but to make it fit in with the ones s/he *is* using. And having hard-coded the image assets, there's now no easy way to simply swap out one set of resources for another to allow that to be done easily.
Chrome will never be installed on my Mac.
One step forward, one step back... So it's a typical Chrome release, then? :-/
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Or they could just break the law and get free room and board plus free health care.
Instruction unclear, now have papercuts on my dick, what did I do wrong?
Well if the website is with the times, it will use SVG... which is vector so...
It's all true. There isn't anything money can't fix! Except, perhaps, for the problem of being euthanized for having too much money. Maybe not that. But everything else! Yes.
They have merely admitted defeat, they have lost this battle but continue to wage the war! The Apps will overcome the Luddites by apping apps like they've never been apped before. We must be strong, we must be loyal, and we must be united! ONLY THE APPS SURVIVE!
#AutismSpeaks. Thank you for your brave contribution.
Are those supposed to be GOOD things? "flatter"? You cannot be serious. These 'designers' are all idiots who will blindly follow their leader off a cliff. Whoever came up with the original 'flat' interface design is an idiot of the highest order, but not as stupid as all the so-called 'designers' who copied him blindly. They aren't designers, they are plagiarists. They can't think of anything original, so they blindly copy whatever is 'in fashion', thus making it even more 'in fashion'.
'Flat' design is BAD design, period.
Flattery will get you nowhere.