The bottom pane in the window only appears when you’re hovering on a link or have downloaded a file. If you open a new tab a third bar presents itself with Favorites but this goes away when you navigate to a site. These are your usual Back, Forward, Reload, Home, the search bar or address bar, a star icon to Favorite the site, and then the utility options. Just below that all navigational elements show as nifty icons. You can move tabs to new windows with ease, you just need to drag and drop them. It’s one tab per site, allowing you to have one browser window with any number of tabs. The top window pane is as unobtrusive as they come. A reliance on icons lets Chrome provide a large window space enabling you to focus on the website while Chrome recedes in the background.

It all starts with Chrome’s well-designed user interface that set the standard a decade ago.Ĭhrome’s bright white background with gray accents and text looks as inviting as ever. For most users, these are all livable compared to the benefits. The most impassioned case against Chrome is one against Google: Their tentacles touch and see everything. You can only have 10 shortcuts on the Google homepage. Others have been tested to be faster and less a resource hog. It’s a little large on the download size compared to its peers. Does it have a couple drawbacks? Relatively, sure. It’s easy to use and navigate, gets top marks for security, it syncs your preferences across devices, there are so many useful extensions, and the built-in Password Manager and generator is the best thing since sliced bread. Today, competitors emulate that no-frills approach as Chrome has solidified itself as the internet’s most popular browser. Google took the same formula and applied it to its Chrome browser when it launched in 2008. This iconoclastic approach revolutionized how we search the web.

Even today on the Google homepage you’re treated simply to a logo, the search bar, and some favorites. Minimalism made the Google search engine a blow-out success at the turn of the millennium.

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