Chrome UI Notes

I don’t have a copy of Windows handy, so I haven’t used Chrome yet. Just gleaning from the screenshots and from notes John Siracusa (who is using it) sent me via IM:

  • Overall, the UI takes minimalism much further than Safari. Google has rethought far more of the standard “web browser” conventions that we’ve been saddled with since Netscape 1.0.
  • No menu bar. Just two pop-up menus in the toolbar: a “document” and a “wrench”.
  • No persistent status bar. Just a “status bubble” that pops up contextually.
  • Tab dragging works the way I wish Safari’s did: you can drag a tab out of a window no matter which direction you initially drag, but there are 40 pixels of vertical slop space before it switches from “rearrange tabs within window” to “move to another window” mode.
  • No bookmarks menu or window. You create bookmarks by clicking the “star” button in the toolbar; after that, you retrieve them by typing their name, URL, or text from the page content in the location field.

★ Tuesday, 2 September 2008