When Google released the Chrome browser for Microsoft's Windows 8
operating system it included a basic version of Chrome OS in the
browser. Whenever you would run Chrome in Windows 8 mode, it would display a
Chrome OS-like bar at the bottom of the screen that acts as a taskbar in
the operating system. The developers at Google have added a similar option to Chrome for Windows 7 in the most recent Chrome Canary builds. I noticed the change in build 39.0.2144.2 and while I did not have
time to check, it is likely that Chrome Dev users can access the feature
as well. When you click on the Hamburger menu of the browser you see the entry
Relaunch Chrome in Chrome OS mode displayed prominently there. If you do, Chrome will restart and all other windows that are currently open on the screen are minimized.
As you can see on the screenshot above, the Windows taskbar remains
which is different from how things are handled on Windows 8 where Chrome
can launch in the system's Metro mode which does not feature a taskbar. On top of that is the Chrome OS taskbar with its start menu and links
to default icons that load the Chrome browser, Gmail, Google Search,
Google Docs and YouTube.
The start menu features a search button that displays additional apps
and a search option that you can use among other things to add more
apps to Chrome OS. These apps come from the Chrome Web Store and it may be necessary to
sign in to a Google account before some of the apps can be installed on
the system. As far as functionality is concerned, it is fairly limited. While you
can install apps, most load a website in Chrome that you can interact
with then. To get back, click on Chrome's Hamburger menu once again and select Relaunch Chrome on the desktop this time.
Conclusion
The switching to Chrome OS takes a considerable amount of time. Ittakes a couple of seconds on a fairly decent Windows 7 Pro system and
may take even longer if the system you are using this on is older than
that. Please note that the Chrome OS integration is only available on
Windows 7 and not previous versions of the operating system, and that
you need Chrome Canary at the point in time to see the new option. So who is this for? Chrome OS users may notice that they apps get
synced across devices provided that they sign in to a Google Account.
They may find this useful while everyone else does not really have an
advantage here as there is not really anything that you cannot do in
Chrome directly as well.
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