May 17, 2011 17:00 GMT  ·  By

Google has been talking about a Chrome UI refresh and the first signs are already visible. The tabstrip is about to undergo a revamp, but first a compact UI is now being tested in the latest Chromium builds. The feature is Windows-only for now, but it enables users to shrink the already minimal Chrome interface to just 30 pixels.

The new Compact Navigation is available in recent Chromium builds, though it's not enabled by default, as is usually the case with experimental features.

If you're running Chromium on Windows, you should notice the "Compact Navigation" experiment in the about:flags section. After you enable it and restart the browser, you will notice a new entry in the right-click menu for the tab strip.

Selecting "Hide the toolbar" will switch you to the Compact Navigation layout. The navigational buttons are moved inside the tabstrip, only the back and forward buttons are kept.

The Omnibox is hidden and the entire navigation area shrinks to 30 pixels tall. It's by far the smallest UI of any browser, but it does come with a few downsides.

The most obvious one is that you don't get to see the URL of the site you're visiting at any given moment. This could be a potential security issue. It also introduces a couple of steps if you want to navigate to a new website inside the tab or even reload the same page.

The Omnibox only shows up when you click on the tab you're visiting. The reload button is also included with the OmniBox UI.

This is only the first release of the compact view and it only works on Windows so it's bound to see some changes and improvements. But it is an interesting approach and could work especially well for installed web applications.