Google Is Serious, Chrome 13 Hides URL Bar 417
An anonymous reader writes "A few months ago, we heard about Google playing with the idea of killing the URL bar in its Chrome browser. Chrome 13 provides a first view how this feature will work. There is a new flag and a context menu option that hides the traditional URL bar and moves a shortened version into each tab."
Keyboard shortcut? (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder if I'll still be able to use the F6 shortcut to place the cursor in the address bar? Having to use the mouse to type in a web address would be enough to make me stop using chrome.
Re:And all for what? (Score:5, Informative)
If you need it, you can always hit F11.
Re:Yeah, but will I be able to kill tabs? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Keyboard shortcut? (Score:5, Informative)
F6? Who uses F6? Try ctrl+L
Summary is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
I'm a Chrome engineer. This summary is wrong. The Compact Nav mode is an experiment we're testing. There are no plans right now to turn it on by default for Chrome 13 or any other Chrome release, and in fact there are currently far too many issues with it for us to fix in the M13 timeframe even if we wanted to turn it on by default.
Re:And all for what? (Score:5, Informative)
They're not taking it away, they're adding the option to display how you want.
Doesn't sound like they're "adding an option" from the article. And I don't know about Chrome, but most other browsers have had the ability to disable the URL bar for probably 15 years now. It's been in Firefox (and Netscape before that) for as long as I can remember.
So, if your iPad ran a full version of Chrome with extensions, would you like that ability to hide a URL bar then? How about a phone?
Again, I don't know about Chrome, but other browsers have had this ability since the browser was invented. If people are too stupid to go to View->Toolbars->Navigation Toolbar and uncheck it, that's their problem.
Every time I use a brand-new installation of Firefox, I always have to disable the "Bookmarks Toolbar" which is enabled by default, because I don't find it useful, and I think it's a waste of space (I go to "Bookmarks" from the main menu when I need them). So what do I do? Scream and cry that this toolbar needs to be removed? Nope, I just go to View->Toolbars->Bookmark Toolbar and I uncheck it. Problem solved. Now, I could understand complaints if the only way to remove it was to hack the source code, or to go to "about:config" and search through a couple thousand lines there, but it's not, it's an extremely easy menu setting.