Google’s new Material Design language is slowly creeping across the search giant’s various apps, sites and services, most recently in Google Chrome for Android.
Introducing cleaner lines, better spacing, thin new icons and logical and expectant animations, the redesigned mobile Chrome is a clear improvement — changes that make the official iOS Chrome app look outdated in comparison!
With the latest release of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 8, rolling out today, September 17, it feels like a good time to look at how the browser could improve its appearance and usability on iPhone and iPad.
Chrome Redesign Concept
Nothing demonstrates potential like a good third-party mockup to help illustrate the gulf between what we have and what we could have.
Dutch UI designer has put together a conceptual redesign that shows how Google’s Material Design language could translate to Chrome on iPhone and iPad.
The result is nothing short of stunning. It looks natural and in sync with the design ethic of iOS 7 & 8.
First things first: basic navigation. Ouden reworks the toolbar to be consistent with Material Design guidelines, adding better spacing, lighter colours and new icons. The menu button is repositioned on the far-right of the bar and rendered as a Material Design ‘paper’ menu.
He adds a new ‘share’ icon to the top tool strip of the menu that, when clicked, would open the native iOS 8 share sheet and not Google’s own sharing menu.
The tab switcher also sees notable improvements in appearance and usability. Open tabs use the same carded design as the activities switcher in Android L, while the New Tab button is remodelled as a ‘floating action button’ in the bottom right corner, in easy reach of the thumb.
Ouden shares more screens and details his reasons behind some of the changes (for example, his vastly rejigged new tab page) in a blog post on Medium.