Ever since Google announced Android “L” and its Material Design look and feel at Google I/O we’ve seen a bunch of apps getting updates trying to recreate that feeling in order to prepare for the arrival of Android “L” later this year. Google has been doing the same thing, Google+ was updated prior to Google I/O and some other apps followed. Google Play Store got a Material Design update (though not a final UI version) as well as Google Chrome Beta app. Not only that but we’ve seen some third party apps taking a Material Design approach, like a journaling app Journey for example as well as Atlas and CM Browsers.
Google has updated its Chrome Beta app once again in order to make it even more Material Designy, if I can put it that way. They added a really neat and smooth animation to the overflow menu in the top right corner of the app. The menu smoothly slides from right to left as you can see in a .gif image down below. Material Design style relies on “motion provides meaning” motto and its look great with its skeuomorphism, not everyone agrees though, of course. Either way, Google is intensively testing Material Design throughout its apps and it’s just a matter of time when we’ll see it featured in all Google apps, maybe even before Android “L” becomes official. Google Chrome Beta also got some bug fixes and stability improvements along with this feature.
All of this might leave Beta and come to Google Chrome rather soon, until then you can download Chrome Beta and check out the new look and feel if you want. I’ve been using it for a long time now and the app works just great, minor bugs here and there but other than that it’s all good. You can definitely use it on a daily basis as your main browser.
