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How Chrome OS tablet UI might look

by Scott Bicheno on 2 February 2010, 14:45

Tags: Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)

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One tablet per day

It's no secret that Google and Apple are on collision course in the smartphone space, with iPhone and Android vying for smartphone OS supremacy. But the launch of the iPad created a new battleground for the two companies, as Google is developing another OS that it expects to be used in the mobile Internet device category, called Chrome.

While Google could never hope to match the hype and publicity of the iPad launch, it waited less than a week to sneak out some renders of how Chrome would allow a special user interface for, you guessed it, tablets.

These images actually come from the open source project behind Chrome, called Chromium, but they seem to have been produced, at the very least, in close collaboration with Google. Here are some of the concepts they claim to explore:

  • Keyboard interaction with the screen: anchored, split, attached to focus.
  • Launchers as an overlay, providing touch or search as means to access web sites.
  • Contextual actions triggered via dwell.
  • Zooming UI for multiple tabs
  • Tabs presented along the side of the screen
  • Creating multiple browsers on screen using a launcher

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE - 16:15, 2 February 2010: We just read a report from Reuters that Google has started advertising the Chrome browser in newspapers and on public transport in London Paris and Amsterdam. It's thought that this move to traditional advertising has been made in anticipation of the browser ballot screen Microsoft will be introducing in Europe.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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just by those images, i want it 1000 times more than i could ever want an ipad, look look apple!! its multitasking in one of those images lol.
JimmyBoy
its multitasking in one of those images lol.

And its just plan coincidence that it looks like iPhone tabs in Safari? lol
I like the third one, with a smaller keyboard anchored to the bottom right of the screen - looks very usable if you're holding the device in your left hand.

Have to say, I'm looking forward to this year. These tablets are the devices I've been waiting for for a couple of years now, and hopefully come next christmas I'll have a huge range of hardware and OS to choose from :D
scaryjim
I like the third one, with a smaller keyboard anchored to the bottom right of the screen - looks very usable if you're holding the device in your left hand.

Have to say, I'm looking forward to this year. These tablets are the devices I've been waiting for for a couple of years now, and hopefully come next christmas I'll have a huge range of hardware and OS to choose from :D

I would want a tablet, but I recently bought a Nokia N900, and I can honestly say it's the most useful gadget I ever owned and would make a tablet rather superfluous to me - I hate to have to carry more than 1 device, and the smaller the better. The N900 is a good browser, decent IMAP email, Linux shell available (SSH etc), media player and rapidly growing app downloads… and it multitasks smoothly. Smaller than a tablet, but there is nothing I can't do on it that I could on a tablet… the only things I find limiting are text entry, which would be the same on a touch screen tablet…

N900 in, tablets, netbooks etc out… I look foward to smartphone devices getting better.
It's not really news that they're advertising Chrome browser. I've driven past a massive billboard for it on the way to school for the last month.