For Its 10th Birthday, Google Chrome Gets A Major Redesign, Better Omnibox, And More

Chrome web browser is ten years old, and Google celebrates by giving it a new look as a present.

Wrapping up a decade of legacy, the browser has captured the world and became the tool of choice to browse the web. With an updated design, Google has given Chrome 69 some refreshed aesthetic appearance and some functional features to make the browser even better.

First up, Chrome has a flatter and rounder design which are in line with Google's Material Design principles.

The shape of the tabs has been tweaked so favicons are easier to see when tabs overpopulate the browser, allowing users to navigate through them better. There is also a new color palette, a redesigned menu appearance, as well as other elements which are further simplified.

The changes can be seen on both mobile and desktop

Chrome 69 - UI

Going a bit down, Chrome shows that its address bar handles URLs differently, as it discards http:// from how the URL is displayed. This should make addresses appear more friendly to the non-geeky users.

"If you step back and consider like your first day with a computing device, which is a phone, probably an Android phone you've just purchased," explained Alex Ainslie, Google's head of design for Chrome. "And then you encounter a URL in Chrome's omnibox that is filled with acronyms: HTTPS, colon, slash, slash, www dot Google dot com slash, dub, dub, dub — all these things. It's incomprehensible. So we're pushing to make the resting state of our omnibox more human readable."

As for https:// users shouldn't worry as Chrome's address bar retains the lock icon in front of every secured web pages.

"The effort to move the web towards https is something the Chrome team has been working on for many years," Ainslie continued. "It was not just a technical challenge — it really was a design problem. We did a bunch of research about iconography in the omnibox for connection security, to try to make sure we were communicating better about whether [the user] was safe or not."

Chrome 69 - Omnibox

Google also made Chrome smarter, by improving how its autofill feature works.

"There's been a lot of investment on the engineering side to make it more robust, so better at identifying fields and filling in the right stuff in the right place," said Ainslie, explaining how Google has studied the pain points of using autofill, and improved the feature in key ways.

Here, users can see favicons in the dropdown, which should make it aesthetically more appealing. Chrome autofill can also show answers to some queries right in the autocomplete list, even before users hit the enter button. This feature is similar to Apple's Safari browser, which offers links to websites like Wikipedia and recent news articles about certain topics.

For privacy-concerned individuals, Google's autocomplete feature is a not-so-subtle reminder of how Google is tracking and watching what users are doing.

But to be fair, users can turn this feature off, and this would block Google from record-keeping anything users have typed. Chrome also handles passwords better, as it can suggest passwords automatically when users log in into a website for the first time, and remembers it when they return.

Chrome 69 - password manager

To summarize, here are some of the most notable changes:

  • Using Google’s Material 2 design principles (rounded corners and general simplification).
  • A revamped autofill and password manage, making them more accurate across different websites.
  • Users can auto-generate strong passwords, right inside Chrome.
  • The Omnibox, or the search bar, can show more information without needing to open a new tab.
  • Also using the Omnibox, users can search for a specific tab, can be handy when users are overwhelmed with too many open tabs.
  • Users can also search through their Google Drive, straight from the Omnibox.
  • Users can create shortcuts for their favorite sites on the new tab page, as well as set a custom background image.

The changes to Chrome 69 are mostly subtle, and this may disappoint some users. For example, Google is also said to have improved Chrome's startup time, memory use, latency and more, but the results aren't clearly seen.

But despite that, Chrome continues to rule as the most popular browser around. Partly because it's cross-platform, and has a Google brand on it.

With Google services become more intertwined with people's digital lives. Whether it's Search, Translate, Google+, Maps, Drive or Photos, chances are people depend on at least one Google service. And using it alongside Chrome is simply a better experience.

Google once said that it prioritizes user experience above anything else. With Chrome 69, seems like Google delivered that promise.

Published: 
05/09/2018