May 24, 2013

With the popularity of Android on smartphones and tablets, Google has a big platform to help push their other products and services. One of those is the Chrome browser for Android. As users surf the net with Chrome, they are able to enjoy the benefits of having their sessions sync with installations of Chrome, say on their desktop and laptop computers. To help capitalize on this and make the use of Chrome and Google services even more attractive, Google announced today the introduction of richer notifications for the Beta channel version of the Chrome browser.

The user interface for notifications and the underlying framework have both been reworked and expanded to be available for developers of Chrome apps and extensions to capitalize on. From an interface perspective, the new notifications adopt a Google Now card-like look. Mimicking capabilities of the notifications available on Jelly Bean Android devices, the new notifications can include the ability to interact directly within the pop-up.

The notification center will display several notifications at once if a user is away from their computer for a while. Along with the usability improvements, notifications can now include formatted text and assets like images. Google provides a panel for users to select which notifications which display.

Google has new versions available for both Windows and ChromeOS. They indicate an OSX version for Macs is on the way. If you want to try out the Chrome Beta, hit the source link for more information.