Chrome’s User Interface is the thinnest out there and is the best, for fans like me. Things are getting even better with a new browser UI is being tested in Chromium flags.
Latest Chromium builds have a new addition to the about:flags page. Compact Navigation : Adds a “Hide the toolbar” entry to the tabstrip’s context menu. Use this to toggle between always displaying the toolbar (default) and only opening it as a drop down box as needed.
Compact Navigation Chrome
click on the image to zoom in
After activating this, you will get a new option when you right click on any tab. “Hide the Toolbar” Once selected, it will give you a new compact version of Chrome UI. You have pretty much everything still there. The wrench icon for settings will be moved to the tab bar to save some space.
The omnibox will not be displayed. But if you double click on any tab, a small box will appear below with the navigation, stop/reload and bookmark icons and this is your new omnibox.
I know that there are a few side tab fans here. This feature is not working with side tabs yet. I’ll let you know if I find it working in later builds.
Like ? Hate ?
Thanks to : Peter Beverloo, François Beaufort, itsdaniel0.com and kurtextrem !
ps: We also have an addition to the options menu in “Under The Hood” A check box to let Chrome run in the background. If you have any backround apps running, you can enable or disable that functionality here.
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I really like this new compact look, but can’t use it for one reason: it removes extensions from view. They need to put the extensions somewhere…
Yes, I was testing the same .. but for some reason, it is crashing whenever I try an extension …
This is the exact reason why I’ve implemented most of my extensions features into a Context Menu
smart move !
It might also provoke developers to use the Page Action, instead of the Browser Action so the extension displays in the omnibox.
I don’t like this feature personally. Then again, even if people did do this, think how clogged omnibox would get!
I saw this on Canary. It looks good, but it certainly needs some improvement. I would rather it showed on mouse over. I’ll have to try out browser action buttons in Canary.
uhmm, addressbar on mouse over .. ok sounds good !
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Dinu, I totally missed it in the canary about:flags.
I agree with Devin on the extensions. I would assume the fix would simply be to put them next to the wrench . . . Maybe it’s really hard to do that(?).
Next, I _really_ like how I can access the omnibox via alt+d. What I’m confused about is why I get a dinky little omnibox rather than the whole thing . . .
Seems like this view would probably work especially well for people who prefer keyboard shortcuts (since buttons like the bookmark star and reload button are gone).
I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
may be just one icon to list all extensions ? hmm that will have a problem … icons that show notifications ( like unread emails, tweets etc )
Yes, I rather like being shown notifications on browser action badges. I have two extensions from ESPN which notify me about news stories, and I also have two clocks (one standard format and one I have adapted from it to show TGM dozenal time) which are convenient because I can always see them. As well as these, WOT shows notifications on its button image. I would rather have at least some instantly visible. At the moment, I have 12 browser action buttons, 7 of which are visible. I could cut that to 5 if needed.
James, I think for some developers this is where the experimental sidebar features will come in
I think it needs a keyboard shortcut for displaying/hiding the navigation box, just like we do for the bookmarks bar.
Todd, did you try alt+d?
or try CTRL+L
Thanks for this, I didn’t know these shortcuts, but my problem is that it does not work with F6 which I always used for going into navigation box. Maybe in the future – hope so!
There should be something like this for fullscreen-vieuw.
Windows version NEEDs to get the same Full Screen View that Chrome has on OSX.
All browser features apears on mouse hover in OSX. On windows, only “exit full screen”.
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