Preview - Google plans to release seven new Chrome versions this year, which means that you will be browsing with Chrome 17 by Christmas. While we can’t predict all new features for this year – we doubt that even Google can – we know that at least four categories will be addressed: Chrome’s fat, the integration of web applications and plug-ins, cloud capabilities and the touch UI, which is already in its second phase following the initial release.

UPDATE: Quite a few people complained about the headline that apparently does not reflect the content of this article. My journalism mentor once told me that all published articles need to keep all readers in mind, which is a rule I accidentally forgot in this article, as about 35% of our readers live outside North America. As one of the readers noted, the word “loser” refers to a popular TV show in the U.S. – The Biggest Loser. The show focuses on candidates “losing” weight. Even if the creativity of the article is gone, I hope this makes the headline clear. Perhaps it was too creative.

 

We highlighted Chrome’s excessive sizes of its developer versions a while ago, when the zipped package exceeded 34 MB and the unzipped folder blew past 80 MB. Chromium builds topped out at 34,988 KB on January 31st, when the file started a mysterious decline down to 27,996 KB until February 24th. The current nightly builds posted today are back up to 34,897 KB. These are, of course, developer versions that carry developer tools that are not included in the consumer version, but they are an indication of a trend.

 

Chrome on a diet

Google itself noted that Chrome may have grown too much fat in a post from earlier this month that was picked up by Cnet’s Stephen Shankland. According to the post, the final release of Chrome 1 was 9.0 MB in size (download file), while the current Chrome 10 is at 26.2 MB. Granted, the current Chrome versions have to carry an integrated Flash and PDF along, but the new browser has grown by 191% compared to Chrome 1. Google now wants to trim Chrome’s fat and is asking its developer for ideas how to bring down its distribution size. In comparison, Firefox’ file size is 12 MB, IE9 (32-bit) is at 17.3 MB and Opera is at 7.1 MB.

Chrome has to trim more fat than any other browser and could become the biggest loser this year. If you will, the diet has already begun with a much leaner logo – which Google says stands for slim and streamlined Chrome.

By the way, as far as plug-ins are concerned, we have noticed an interesting switch for Chrome that extends the hardware acceleration feature set of Chrome to plug-ins. There is no public documentation on this feature yet.

 

Touch UI

ConceivablyTech posted a first view of the coming touch UI for Chrome a few days ago, which mimics the functionality of an Android screen that can be swiped to the left or right to access additional screens. The latest nightly builds drop the dark blue background and changed the page icons. There is also a (non functional) option to reopen recently closed items. It is a very rough implementation and very much a work in progress, but it shows that Google is serious about this one. Instant Search for Chrome has begun in a similar way and saw three main iterations until the final look was established.  Expect this feature to be available in Chrome 13 or 14.

 

Web Apps

Google is looking for new ways to make the handling of apps much easier. The touch UI may now be very helpful to allow fast access to apps and if you know what you are looking for, typing the name of an app could be faster. Google has already developed a feature that will allow users to launch apps by typing the name in the URL bar. It is unclear when this feature will be available, but it seems that it will miss Chrome 12.

In combination with the touch UI, Chrome will turn much more into what some would perceive to be a OS UI and not so much a browser anymore. The URL bar will become a tool to search, research and find information, while the app icons appear to be glorified bookmarks to the services you use most frequently. Add to that a plan to entirely drop the URL bar in a future Chrome and you end up with a connected OS interface. This will be especially interesting as we are seeing the rise of web applications that feature offline capability, which will give Chrome OS a much more compelling case.

 

Cloud support

Realistically, the cloud support has been somewhat a disappointment in chrome so far – with the exception of cloud print that has surfaced with Chrome OS. However, we are still waiting for remoting support. We would expect that Google will be enabling such a feature to its full potential, including Android connectivity. Allowing your phone to access your Chrome/Chrome OS could turn into a killer application for Google. There is also the note of a currently developed P2P API integration in Chrome, which most likely refers to remoting capabilities.

Our prediction would be that rolling out cloud features is Chrome’s biggest opportunity this year as Microsoft is stuck for now with IE9 and Mozilla has to figure out a way how to turn Firefox into a platform by convincing enough people out there to build an open web app store.

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