Google Testing Different Look for New Tab Page in Chromium
Posted on 23. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey in Features, News
The newest builds of Chromium are coming with a different looking new tab page. This change comes after earlier this week a newer touch-capable version started to appear in the open source version of Chrome. Here is the look of the new tab page in the most recent builds.
Here is the one that we started seeing earlier this week.
I would have to say that I like this newer version better. It appears to have a cleaner look and makes the icons stand out more. One thing I have noticed is that in the newer version the names are removed from the app icons which may lend to its apparent simplicity.
These changes have to make one start to wonder where Chrome OS fits in with the Android ecosystem. TheStreet’s Anton Wahlman just posted a great article about the fact that Chrome OS could be a way for Google to escape the problems it has had with carriers adding their own software on smartphone devices. Many have complained that Android on some of these phones can be slow or glitchy.
With Chrome as a platform browser on a phone, Google might be able to circumvent that to some degree. It’s an interesting argument because while that may be true, many webapps are not designed for small screens that phones have. Android’s Honeycomb version for tablets was supposed to fix this, but from the reviews I have read about Android tablets the results have been mixed.
Which version of Chromium’s new tab page do you like? Do you think we’ll see touch devices using Chrome/Chrome OS?
4 Responses to “Google Testing Different Look for New Tab Page in Chromium”
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Cromado
23. Mar, 2011
Unfortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to try the new releases of Chromium. But by the small picture I can see that some changes are good.
I really have to try in order to have a good review…
CR2
24. Mar, 2011
The names are actually there, but the text is just white. If you click and hold an app and drag it to one of the “pages”, you can see the white text showing on the gray background
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