Google May Kill Chrome URL Bar

Pretty sensationalist headline. "Google exploring ways to increase screen space for content" would be more accurate, but I guess that doesn't get clicks.

One of my favourite things about Chrome is its efficient use of vertical space. Here's Chrome side by side with Firefox on my laptop:<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/7Sda0.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/7Sda0.png</a><p>(in fact, when Chrome is maximised the space above the tab disappears, saving another 15 or so pixels)<p>Would be very happy with a little more room though. The compact mode looks good, as long as the keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+k or Alt+d) still work.<p>Edit: Thanks, will look into your suggestions. These are the basic installs of Chrome and FF however, so I think it's a fair comparison.

Incidentally, the original NCSA Mosaic browser had no URL bar. In its place was a drop-down list containing the browse history. To type a URL you would select "Open URL" from the menu, or hit Command+U.<p>Likewise, early versions of Netscape also hid the URL bar by default, and used Command+L to present a URL dialog box (behavior that's still present in Firefox today, when the URL bar is hidden).

This will have the effect of further decreasing the <i>positive</i> feedback for HTTPS'd websites. Browsers already have plenty of negative feedback, but have always been sorely lacking positive feedback and this will only exasperate the problem.

I have serious doubts this information is up to date. The mockup for the interface without a URL bar was made something like a year ago, when Chrome OS was first announced. It had an actual implementation of the said compact navigation that was removed soon afterwards. That document existed at that time and I think they just haven't updated it.<p>If I recall correctly, Compact Navigation looked like IE9, with a mini omni box that fit on the tab row. I thought it was ugly, and the tab strip is cramped enough already without the omnibox, navigation and certainly not extensions.<p>Also, the multiple profiles thing isn't new.<p>As a random note, does the Chrome team have something with ponies? The mockup shows the url google.com/ponies (just checked, 404). One of the Cr-48 hardware versions is named Pony.

&#62; It is somewhat surprising that Google is not pursuing the sidetab navigation version [...]. The company said that this layout would waste space for users who do not use many tabs, that it only works nicely on screen layouts that are 1366 pixels wide and that the layout does not relate well to Chromium browser overall.<p>Yeah that's a nice list of reasons not to do the obviously right thing.<p>Take that very page. Its viewable area is 985px by 4701px. Even my little 1280x800 screen has huge gray bars on the left and right sides to fill up the wasted horizontal space. I have to scroll vertically seven times to see it all.<p>Do Chrome devs not use widescreen monitors? What makes them think cramming weird, non-idiomatic UI elements into the window's precious vertical space makes any sense at all?<p>That sidetab version is beautiful.

Makes a lot of sense for netbooks where screen real estate is at a premium. I hope that if they make changes they will be user configurable though.

That Sidetab mockup looks great. Back before I switched to Chrome from Firefox, I used vertical tabs in Firefox, and it was awesome.

Maybe they should move the unreadable mess of microtabs I have on the top of my window to the vast swath of blank area on the left or right of my widescreen monitor (yes, I have 30 or 40 tabs open at any one time, rendering the top bar almost useless).

Does Chrome send back (anonymized) data about usage? Or are there instrumented versions of Chrome/Chromium that do do this?<p>I wonder what the usage numbers are for how often you focus on the URL bar and change it within one tab. I notice in my own usage, I pretty much ALWAYS open a NEW tab to go to a new site and never touch the URL bar, so compacting it or hiding it behind an extra click seems like good UX design if it's backed up by usage data.

Interesting changes. Not gonna have a real opinion either way until I get to try it first hand, though. Maybe I'll move to the dev channel when the new UI hits there.<p>Reading the article, though, I'm very interested with the way they're going to handle multiple users - mainly this:<p>&#62; If a user closes three windows with three different identities and the reopens three windows, the windows would assume the identity of the three identities again, Google said.

This will be a nice experiment. As a UI designer, I am always looking for part of the interface that are not used much and replace them with what is used more often - so this thing totally makes sense.<p>It will be interesting to see what it results into - a frustrating experience or more vertical space and distraction free UI.

Chrome is my primary browser, and while I applaud increasing space devoted to content, I wish Chrome had better support for alternate search engines. My primary searches are (in order of use) Google, Wikipedia, Amazon. By better support I mean I don't like the way it works in the omni-box. I think the old-fashioned way done in IE8 and FF of having a dedicated search box is much more convenient and easier for most users to configure, but I'm open to other alternatives. I understand IE9 has jumped on the bandwagon and dropped the search box too.<p>[EDIT] My biggest beef: remembering to substitute underscore for space in Wikipedia search terms.

I personally use firefox with pentadactyl, which by default removes the URL bar. It was a bit akward at the beginning but it's a major gain of space (especially in fullscreen mode) and there's nothing I could do with the URL bar that I can't do with keybindings.<p>For instance, if I want to edit the current page's url, I type "y o &#60;cmd v&#62;" to paste it in the status bar.

Mid last year there was a tab option to hide the url bar, I can't remember if only for pinned tabs or regular ones also. For some reason that got removed and now we have separate app windows in recent releases, which in my opinion, are somewhat annoying mostly due to tabs originating from app window being opened in separate browser window.

Along the same lines I was thinking of the following alternative:<p>having no url bar at all but if you press let's say Ctrl+g (put whatever is available here) the url bar appears in the center of the screen and it disappears when you press Enter. Do you think that something like that could make sense?

I think it would be neat if browsers worked more like mobile browsers, where they are full screen by default and you press a button to make the ui appear. I am thinking about Dolphin browser for Android specifically.

They're focusing on the wrong things.<p>The compact UI is very confusing. The current UI is fine, don't screw with it just to save an extra 10 pixels of vertical space.<p>How about freezing feature changes for 3 months and fixing bugs?

Reminds me of this: <a href="http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2010/04/address-bar-and-sea-of-darkness.html" rel="nofollow">http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2010/04/address-bar-and-sea-of-d...</a>

I wrote about this at one point. Here's a link:<p><a href="http://www.quora.com/Can-Duruk/Web-Development/URL-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Can-Duruk/Web-Development/URL-1</a>

I would've thought better tab management would be first priority, as nameless mountains are really grating. Tab groups can't come quickly enough.

This is probably based on the usage data the Chrome uploads to Google. People are perhaps not directly using the URL bar that much.

Am I the only one that after looking at the mockup tried going to google.com/ponies and was subsequently disappointed?

If I don't have the URL bar, how can I tell the difference between a legitimate site and phishing site?

If google really wanted to do something about the space, they would look towards the download bar.

They'll have to pry my url from my cold dead hands!<p>Seriously, no always-visible url and I go back to firefox.

Looks like how tabs and location-bar is intermixed in MSIE9. Must admit I'm not too happy about it.