It is being rumored that a major visual and functional overhaul of the interface of Google’s Chrome web browser is on the way. The most noticeable and prominent change brought about by this update will be the browser potentially doing away with the address bar altogether. This can be the most prominent change that the browser has undergone since it was invented. Other features on the platter include the ability to have multiple user profiles on the browser, which the users can use in parallel. Even the Chrome OS, which is still in the developmental phase, could see a number of changes in its user interface in the upcoming months. Jeff Chang from Google spoke about the changes saying that there were a number of UI efforts that were in consideration. He has also promised weekly updates about the project which will be fit for “public consumption”.
The last time such a basic level change in the UI of Chrome was seen was in July 2010 when Chrome 6 was released. Google had then unified the stop and go buttons and combined the Tools and Page menus. Termed as the “Naked Browser” by many because of its minimalistic approach for a web browser UI, Chrome has set the trend for the web browsers to take up the slim and bare minimum UI style in order to maximize viewing space for websites and web applications. It might have initially led the fray, but Chrome is currently behind Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 in efficiency in terms of the available pixels to web content. The news coming in from the Google camp suggests that the web giant is working on minimizing its graphical interface to the most optimum level possible by doing away with something as basic as the URL bar from the browser.
