I'm just going to comment on the first aspect of this, the "Merge Tabs and Apps" option.<p>The first thing I do with the "Merge Tabs and Apps" is to disable it and use the in browser tab switcher.<p>I usually have many tabs open and I usually have many apps open. Merging the two lists just creates more noise in the app switcher. Imagine if they did this on desktop and suddenly alt-tab gave me (right now) an extra 26 things to switch through! I don't even think I am a heavy open-tabber.<p>My non-techie spouse wanted me to change it back immediately after the update with no prompting from me. I'm sure some people must prefer it but I find it way too busy in the switcher.
It's really depressing, how skim these posts on UI are. The keyword is <i>user</i>, not <i>interface</i>. And yet - as almost all posts on UI/UX - zero references on how they got to know what the users want, or how they use the product.<p>Really, it's getting ridiculous: we get thousands of words on how to design an icon family, and zero on user research. What does this mean? Do we really think we "know" our users? Are we stupid enough to keep fiddling with icons while the foundations of our work - deciding what we build and design, and why - are hunch-based?
Its nice of them to dive into their decision to redesign the tab switcher, and I utterly disagree with their reasoning. "Merge tabs and apps" is something I turned off right away and something my non-tech-savvy android using friends constantly ask me for help in disabling.
>"The omnibox: Now that the switcher is fully integrated to Android’s, the Chrome omnibox relationship with the Google search box will become more obvious and friction-less. Before this change, entering a search in the system Google search box opened a tab inside Chrome. Now, triggering a search will open an activity in the Android recent stack, at the same level of any other app, not buried inside one."<p>I can appreciate how much Google wanted to fix that "search buried inside an app" problem, seeing as how they are a search company.
>"Another step toward making our Chrome invisible."<p>Dammit, I think they have gone too far in making Chrome invisible!<p>I was scrolling up and down, comparing the picture of the old version of Chrome with the picture of the new version of Chrome.<p>But I didn't actually have to scroll up and down to compare the old with the new, because there was the new version of the Chrome interface running in the window frame around the web page about Chrome that I was scrolling up and down!<p>But Chrome is so invisible, it took me a while to actually break the frame and see it there...
It's funny how much they subtitle their post here "Content, not Chrome", yet in the most recent version of Chrome they removed the ability to disable the "People" menu. The bug for this [0] has been marked wontfix, saying it's "working as intended". Depending on how long your profile name is, that's an awful lot of chrome taking up space from your content...<p>[0] <a href="https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=496829" rel="nofollow">https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=496829</a>
I don't know what it is with Google. Some of their products have great UX (yeah, like Chrome - don't forget what desktop browsers looked like when it first came out) while at the same time some are just horrible (Wave, Hangouts...)
I wish they would still take the “content, not Chrome” priority on the Desktop. I know that removing the URL bar is something that breaks the web for less savvy users, so I get the choice to make that option hard to find. But, a minimalist experience (e.g., cVim, a vimperator/penta alternative for chrom{e,ium}) almost requires this feature.<p>Since its complete removal, there is essentially no way to have a truly minimal browsing experience on chromium…
For me the Chrome tabs merged with the app is one of the most confusing UI choices I have ever witnessed. Glad to hear that it can be switched off though.