Google’s Really Trying To Kill The URL Bar

There was talk a few months back of a compact mode in Chrome that would turn the URL bar into a contextual element. Now it’s seeping into Chrome 13 builds. Here’s how it works:

Instead of showing a URL bar permanently, the user will have to double-click a tab to see a shortened version of the URL that is displayed with a hover effect, if you move the mouse pointer away from the field, the URL bar disappears. The feature has to be enabled via a flag in a recent Canary or nightly build version of Chrome 13. To activate teh hidden URL bar, users will also have to right-click a tab and select “Hide the toolbar”Besides killing the URL bar, the new feature also moves the tools menu, hides any extension and introduces new back/forward buttons.

The URL bar has been a permanent staple of web browsers for as long as I can remember. But with web pages and images occupying more and more pixels on my screen, I’ll take the extra 30 pixels of vertical space i’m afforded with this feature. [Conceivably Tech via Slashdot]