Mar 15, 2011 17:24 GMT  ·  By

The tabstrip in Google Chrome is getting a major revamp. Several new features and big changes are planned and the first updates are already landing. The very latest Chromium builds now support multiple-tab selection and a new way of displaying tab titles, to make them easier to distinguish.

These are very early changes, but they do indicate that Google is working fast implementing the features on its to-do list for the 'third-generation' Chrome tabstrip.

Multi-tab selection is exactly what it sounds like, it enables users to select several tabs at a time to move, drag out of windows, close and do any other type of tab manipulation.

For those working with many tabs at a time and several windows, it's one of the most exciting new features to come in a long time and will make multitasking and tab management much, much easier to do in Chrome.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Google laid out plans for a thorough tabstrip revamp which included the multi-select feature.

Now, the first functional pieces are available, basic support for multiple tab selection has landed, though it is not enabled by default. Launching Chromium with the '--enable-multi-tab-selection' flag will enable the feature.

You will be able to select several tabs at a time, with either CTRL+click or SHIFT+click, but there is still some work to be done. For example, while multiple tabs may be selected, dragging them will only display one.

There are also some rendering errors at this point. But, at this pace, it may be that multi-tab selection will be ready in time for Chrome 12.

Another tab-related change has been introduced, tab names for pages from the same domains, and sharing a title, are now elided to be more informative.

The first part of the title is omitted to make it easier to know which tab you want to chose, especially if you have many tabs open. Of course, if you have too many tabs open, the name will not be displayed at all. But this is where the planned overflow UI comes in. [via Peter Beverloo]