Chrome OS Flow Brings Apps to the Forefront

Posted on 09. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features, News

chromeflowlogo Since the first release of the Chromium Project’s source code to the public back in November, a UK student who goes by the name Hexxeh has been steadily releasing custom builds. Unlike the Chromium code updates that are regularly put out by Google, this is a better packaged version for public consumption. The builds are small enough to pop onto a USB drive, boot up on whatever computing device that is laying around, and is quick to start up and utilize. It’s been the best early look users have had to see what Chrome OS will be able to do once it reaches a commercial stage later this year.

Recently, Hexxeh has been posting some hints that his newest version, Chrome OS Flow, could be the best release yet for mainstream purposes. The focus on this time, now that a lot of hardware has been tested and is supported in his builds, is to focus on the application side of the operating system. And that’s not a bad idea since many wonder if Chrome OS will be able to function as a regular personal computing replacement, or just another gadget that is stacked up for our personal information disposal.

A new way of constructing the builds, which Hexxeh has dubbed ReFlow, will also be introduced. This will allow for more time to be spent on actually testing and updating Flow as opposed to using up a lot of time creating the build itself.

Here is a screenshot Hexxeh posted on Twitter recently that shows Flow’s focus towards making web applications easy to use in Chrome with a configurable Javascript menu:

chromeosflow

Expect Flow to require a 2 GB USB Stick, have auto-update for patches and updates as well as is expected to be released on February 12.

Some other new features include user interface changes in addition to the aforementioned applications menus that are customizable and fixes for issues that plagued last release (Chrome OS Zero) for sound, Flash and Bookmark Sync. Also, if you have an application that you want to have included in the Flow directory, you can find more about submitting it to Hexxeh right here.

Update: Apparently there has been problems for Hexxeh getting Flow released, as the Chromium project has changed some features. We’ll be posting when Flow comes out.