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Like living on the bleeding edge? Now you can run the Chrome beta channel on your Android phone, just like your desktop. Quicker, with all the new features, and even faster iteration; what’s not to love? Oh yeah, bugs.
You can install the beta along side the stable release of Chrome for Android, so you’ll always have a backup in case Google borks something. Apparently the beta currently available has boosted performance by 25 to 30 per cent. Feel the need for speed? Jump on this link, as betas don’t show up in Google Play’s search right now. [Google]
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Firefox App For Android Is Ready For Beta
Say Hi to The New Google Chrome Beta, It's Listening
Definitely noticed the speed boost and so far no stability problems.
It’s fast, but grrrr… the URL bar still doesn’t auto-hide. Come on Google, most OEM phones have done this for years, it’s time to catch up…
This annoyed me for ages. The developer FAQ says this is why:
The URL bar in Chrome for Android is Chrome’s Omnibox, with all of the built-in search and navigation features. For this initial release, we decided to show the Omnibox at all times. We are monitoring usage patterns and feedback to decide how to evolve this feature in future iterations of the application.”
In other words, Google Chrome pays its keep through 1) search and 2) data-mining. And the URL bar is necessary for both of these. Once everyone gets in the habit of using it, then Google will no longer shove it in our faces.
Yeah, I Googled this a while ago and found that FAQ as well.
I suppose having the box constantly visible might mean that people use it more. I just can’t think of any time when I’ve thought to myself ‘I really want to search, but I can’t be bothered to scroll back up to that URL bar that’s just auto-hidden itself…’.
Strangely, running Dolphin on my Nexus 4 the URL bar doesn’t hide, even though it did on my old HTC Desire. Maybe both Dolphin and Chrome recognise the screen size available and make a decision to hide the URL bar or not. I’d prefer if it was an option I could select manually though!
I’m quite taken with Chrome though, mainly due to the way it handles tabs and text input fields are handled quickly, unlike the laggy text input within Dolphin. However, you still get blank sections of page when scrolling too fast, you have to request the desktop versions of sites every single time you visit them (there’s no option in the settings menu, which simply has to change) and when swiping to get to the next tab on the right I keep opening Google Now instead.
To go fullscreen in Dolphin, open the addons panel by dragging from the right hand side of the display (harder to do on a phone) or push the menu button, then ‘Add-ons’. Then tap on ‘Full Screen’. When you’re in fullscreen, you can call up the URL bar again by pushing menu. Repeat the procedure to turn fullscreen off.
If you want to switch between desktop and mobile sites as a permanent setting, then Dolphin also has an addon for that.
Yeah I know, I’ve been using Dolphin for well over 2 years now. My point was that using Dolphin on my HTC Desire the URL bar was hidden automatically, which was great. Now using Dolphin on my Nexus 4 I have to do what you suggested to hide it at all, which is a pain.
Also, you don’t need a plugin to always load the desktop version of sites in Dolphin. You just need to go to ‘Settings’ > ‘User Agent’ and set it to ‘Desktop’.