Goodbye, Google Chrome Address Bar

[Jack]

That sound you hear is the silent death of Google Chrome's URL bar—or at least, the contemplative consideration of such over at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

An email sent to the Chromium developer mailing list by product manager Jeff Chang indicates that Google has, "a number of UI / frontend efforts under way" for Chrome, including the potential removal of the address bar from the standard Chrome interface.

So how, then, might one type a URL into the browser? The address bar wouldn't be gone for good in one of the four "window UI variants" being worked on by the Chrome team. Rather, the "compact" view that calls for the removal of the bar instead relegates the Web address field to a little drop-down element underneath a page's Chrome tab. Tabs—as well as the browser's navigation buttons (back, forth, reload—would all live within one unified horizontal plane.

The "hidden" address bar would appear in two instances: when a page is loading and whenever a user clicks on the tab of a given page itself.

"If we take the address bar out of the tab, it can be used as both a launcher and switcher; the user doesn't have to worry about replacing their active tab," reads Google's description.

More details - link

 

[Watasha]

That sound you hear is the silent death of Google Chrome's URL bar—or at least, the contemplative consideration of such over at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

An email sent to the Chromium developer mailing list by product manager Jeff Chang indicates that Google has, "a number of UI / frontend efforts under way" for Chrome, including the potential removal of the address bar from the standard Chrome interface.

So how, then, might one type a URL into the browser? The address bar wouldn't be gone for good in one of the four "window UI variants" being worked on by the Chrome team. Rather, the "compact" view that calls for the removal of the bar instead relegates the Web address field to a little drop-down element underneath a page's Chrome tab. Tabs—as well as the browser's navigation buttons (back, forth, reload—would all live within one unified horizontal plane.

The "hidden" address bar would appear in two instances: when a page is loading and whenever a user clicks on the tab of a given page itself.

"If we take the address bar out of the tab, it can be used as both a launcher and switcher; the user doesn't have to worry about replacing their active tab," reads Google's description.

More details - link

This could be another positive innovation by the Google dev team or a total disaster. I don't really see the point of messing with it myself.