14 DAY TRIAL // 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.
Meanwhile, Chrome OS is limited to the plain old notebook. But that won't be forever, there have been some signs that Google is thinking about a touch interface for Chrome and some of its engineers are already working on it.
In fact, they're so far along that users with a bit of coding skills and knowledge of the Chromium source code can compile a version with the touch interface enabled.
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.
While the main UI elements are there, there's probably a lot more to be done, especially on the optimization front, but we may get to see a touch-based Chrome or Chrome OS build soon. [via ChromeStory]