Will Google Kill the URL Bar in Chrome?

All web browsers are getting serious overhauls with the most recent being Internet Explorer 9 with its new one box. This is a unified address and search box and it makes sense as you can search from the URL box in most browsers anyway.

Some users on the other hand prefer separate address and search boxes, for instance to use two different search engines or to separate search from loading websites directly.

Now ConceivablyTech are reporting that Google is considering options for future versions of its Chrome browser, and the company could be going even further than Microsoft.

In an interesting move, one possible option is to remove the address and search boxes altogether and instead allow people to type searches and URLs directly into a browser tab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an approach that makes a large amount of sense in the web 2.0 world. As more and more people use web applications the browser "chrome" is becoming an annoyance that just takes up valuable desktop space. This is especially true on the smaller screen of netbooks, tablets and the like.

While it may make sense from a chrome-less perspective, it is usability that could drop as a result. Considering that Internet users made use of address bars to type addresses and searches, it remains to be seen how users will react to a drastic change as proposed by the company.

The proposal does not address critical questions that solutions need to be found for. For instance, what happens if the user opens a lot of tabs?

Thus there are also additional options they are looking a, for instance to use one address form for searches and urls just like Internet Explorer does.

You can see their four concepts above. It can  be assumed that the Sidetab concept will probably fail to gain enough support while the classic and compact views are more likely to be selected by the company.

It is interesting to note that Google considers adding a touch-optmized version of the browser with larger buttons. This is something that Microsoft won't be delivering until Windows 8 either in the summer or the autumn of 2012. Google used Chrome to get a significant head start on both Firefox and IE by revolutionizing the browser and including the features that people actually *needed*. By showing what a touch interface could look like now they could solidify this position for the foreseeable future.

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