Chrome OS 19 includes UI overhaul, looks like an OS now.

Google’s OS for Chromebooks – Chrome OS has been under development for a while now. There are a bunch of PC manufacturers who’ve been manufacturing notebooks that are better known as Chromebooks. While Samsung and Acer are two of the more popular brands, the Chromebook movement hasn't seemingly gathered much steam. Off late, people have been doubting whether Google have forgotten about their Chrome OS and Chromebooks and are focussing on other more interesting areas, such as Android, instead. The whole idea behind Chrome OS was using a light operating system, along with a browser running web apps. The problem all this while has been that the OS looks like the Chrome browser.

Google has decided to change things a bit with their latest Chrome OS 19 update. The OS now has a clear taskbar and windows in the OS can be resized. Google calls its new window manager, Aura. The user interface is now more like Windows or any other major OS. Users can now move their windows around and of course, they will be able to use this update on their Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700 Chromebooks. There are a whole bunch of other updates, too. Users can access all their Chrome apps using a single icon. The most commonly used apps and websites also show in the taskbar. More file formats are supported – tar, gz and gzip2. The note taking app, ScratchPad has also been better integrated into the OS now and the audio-video players have been updated. The display support has been improved as well. Mirroring of displays and switching of primary displays is also enabled.

So clearly, there are tons of new things happening with Chrome OS and we’ve only listed some of the major visible changes. There are some disgruntled CR-48 Chromebook users who aren’t going to be getting this latest version. Orit Mazor from Google clarified that they were only skipping the major Chrome 19 update for the CR-48 Chromebooks. The CR-48s would receive security and other critical updates for Chrome. Future large Chrome updates would arrive on the CR-48. A number of bug fixes are also part of this developer build update. For more details on the updates, check out Google’s Chrome releases update blog.