In the latest daily build of Google’s Chromium browser, the familiar ‘Windows XP’ style tab bar was replaced with something less ‘polished’ that may be the first steps towards implementing full GTK themeing for the browser.
For example, running Google Chrome in Windows XP gives you the blue tab bar style, whilst running it in Windows Vista or Windows 7 give you an ‘aero’ tab bar.
Since Chrome will be using GTK on Linux it’s not a wild assumption to assume that the latest daily builds odd appearance is the first step towards implementing full GTK theme support across the browser…
Indeed, other people are confirming this appears to be GTK as the tab bar is trying to match various different GTK themes, just with varying degrees of success!
An official ‘beta’ of Google Chrome is apparently planned for June. If this work is part of making sure the browser’s blends in nicely on the Linux desktop then it makes that goal date seem far more likely!
I’ll (naturally) be keeping an eye on this…