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Google Is Testing a New Chrome UI (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Google engineers have rolled out a new Chrome user interface (UI). Work on the new Refresh UI has been underway since last year, Bleeping Computer has learned. The new UI is in early testing stages, and only available via the Google Chrome Canary distribution, a version of the Chrome browser used as a testing playground. Users who are interested in giving the new UI a spin must install Chrome Canary, and then access chrome://flags, a section that contains various experimental options not included in Chrome's default settings section.
Are they going to hide the address bar now?
So all of Mozilla's work to turn Firefox into a Chromeclone was for notting?
Something like Netscape with tabs. That would be just about perfect.
Please say it isn't so, like everything else that's been overhauled recently...
I hope it resembles Classic Firefox. Maybe then Mozilla will finally give its users what they really want (albeit for all the wrong reasons).
This is good news. If the UI doesn't change then there must not be any progress. Progress!
What difference do small imperceptible changes to UI make while Chrome continues to stalk everyone using it?
A web browser should be simple. A back/forward button, refresh/stop, address bar and tabs. Making kentucky fried interfaces just chases people to alternative browsers. Be like Seamonkey, which still has a 90’s Netscape UI.
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For those that didn't see TFA, they're not doing a massive overhaul. They've changed the "angled" edges of the tabs at the top to be more square with rounded corners instead. That's it. Nothing else has changed. This is hardly even worth a mention. It is a very VERY minor UI adjustment at best. Then again, when Google changed their logo to fix the kerning by 1 pixel, that was enough to warrant an article here, too...
n/t
Google has been working on the Chrome UI since last year and all they've come up with is a square/rounded shape to tabs rather than a trapezoidal one?
Any company that's this worried and putting in this much effort into such minutia is clearly going to be missing the big issues.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
... Firefox copying the new UI. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
NM
They didn't do evil. Facebook was a practice run.
As someone who first used the web with NCSA Mosaic I'm SHOCKED. Although, honestly, the angled tabs look better. Whatever. Slow news day?
Apple's lawyers are probably rubbing their tentacles together with glee at all the money they're going to make.
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Get someone in Google to create the Firefox UI from 3.x in Chrome as an April Fool's joke.
Give it to some of their interns to do as a way to learn the Chrome code base as they probably will really think it's a joke. They probably will not know any different because they are unlikely to have used the original Firefox UI for real.
"Accidently" ship it in the production Chrome code base and then watch as everyone in the real world turns it on... :-)
Finally, watch as the Firefox team blindly copies this latest addition to Chrome...
Yes, I am evil. :-) Anyone with the right connections want to have a go at trying to make this happen ?
Tabs on bottom please.
Protip: you can please all parties by making this an option.
Version 1.0 of anything is the perfect version. My baby duck brain tells me so.
I see very little difference.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Too late. After the Goolag made clear their utter contempt for free speech, I switched back to Firefox. And I think a lot of other people did too.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Round borders...gross. For some reason, round borders on UI elements make me feel the same as someone who reaches to shake your hand, but sneezes into it first, would make you feel. I literally get this exact same reaction, and it's weird. I hate round borders.
Mozilla will have Firefox out with the new UI even before Goggle does.
I find the change of the tab design to be going backwards in UI design.
Crossing lines between tabs to give them a trapezoidal look is not necessarily wider than having a straight line between them.
If you look closely at the example comparison images, there is not more spacing between the icon and the tab border in the new design except for maybe a single pixel or two.
It just appears that that the trapezoidal tabs are wider -- and that is a good thing: The crossing lines make the tabs more distinguishable.
The reduction of contrast of elements makes it only more difficult to see what is what; that an element is clickable or distinct at all.
I find the image with many tabs open and no visible separation between them to be laughable, to be honest.
A crime against good UI design that Google seems persistent in introducing everywhere is the close button that does not appear until the mouse is hovering over it. It appears as if the new tab design has this "feature" too.
You may think that you are selecting an item, but then the close button appears as you are clicking it and the item disappears before you have time to react. In some instances on Google web sites, there is no undo functionality to get that item back.
If there had been only a small delay from hover to close then that would not have happened. But better is often to always have the close button there so that you could always know what is going on and be able to delete items quickly.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Must be slow tech news week because from what I see its hardly anything major.
What's wrong with the current one? How does the new one improve it? If I were malicious I would think that this is just another shenanigan from the GUI design team to stay relevant. If I were malicious.
They need to add a non-minimalistic mode. I have no problem with minimalism as a heavy user, but from my experience light users prefer a more traditional interface where everything isn't hidden. Firefox allows you can turn the menus back on so that takes care of many of the problems.
I never recommend Chrome to my low tech friends (or parents) for this reason.
and then watch as everyone in the real world turns it on...
That's where your evil plan goes off tracks.
In the interests of backward compatibility, any new UI should be limited only to those born after it is introduced.