Google insists that Chrome OS is designed for laptop and desktop computers with a keyboard and touchpad, but behind the scenes there’s work underway to build a touchscreen-friendly version of the browser-based operating system. Now web developer François Beaufort has compiled a version of Chromium with the Touch UI installed and the operating system is pretty recognizable as a variation of Google Chrome OS……….
Google Chrome OS has finally arrived, the cloud OS-powered Chromebooks have started selling, after quite a bit of waiting, but in the time since Chrome OS being announced and finally becoming available, the iPad happened and changed things quite a bit. Touch-devices are all the rage right now, so Android is king at Google. One curious developer did just that and has shared some screenshots of the touch interface for Chrome, or rather Chromium. While work is pretty far along, it’s still rough around the edges and there is clearly more to be done. Still, it serves as a good idea of what Google has planned for Chrome. Most of the changes make sense, the most noticeable changes are the bigger buttons, bigger OmniBox, bigger everything really. It’s only natural though, you need bigger elements for touch, especially since the interaction will also happen on smaller screens than that of a regular desktop or laptop. Another optimization is the way suggestions are displayed, in a horizontal list rather than vertical. This is partly because the suggestion area is taller than usual, but also to accommodate the on-screen keyboard. The keyboard has been around for a few months, it’s been available in the Chromium source code for anyone to check out. Finally, another noticeable change is to the tabs, normally, they would be too small to make them usable with touch, so the touch UI moves the favicon over the tab to create a button of sorts.
Pictures :
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