Easily overlooked now, this clean UI was a breath of fresh air compared to the overcrowded toolbars of popular browsers pre-2008.Īnother hugely popular feature, Incognito mode allows you to browse privately by disabling history recording, reducing traceable breadcrumbs and removing tracking cookies on shutdown.
The third row is made up of bookmark folders and installed apps. Extensions and browser settings icons line up to the right of the URL box. The middle row includes 3 navigation controls (Back, Forward & Stop/Refresh), a URL box which also allows direct Google web searching and a star bookmarking icon. The browser is made up of 3 rows of tools, the top layer horizontally stacks automatically adjusting tabs, next to a simple new tabs icon and the standard minimize, expand & close windows controls. Google focused on trimming down unnecessary toolbar space to maximise browsing real estate. We think Chrome improved on this further though - the simple UI hasn’t changed much since the beta launch in 2008.
While this was a revolutionary area for PC users, Mac users were already used to slimline looking browsers thanks to Safari.
