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Chrome dev has been updated to version 31. Two things I'm noticing:

 

1. It uses its own scrollbars rather than native ones now.

2. What does the a on the top left of the 'Hamburger menu' mean? Any idea?

 

See screenshot:

 

post-1302-0-39464900-1377671615.png

Chrome dev has been updated to version 31. Two things I'm noticing:

1. It uses its own scrollbars rather than native ones now.

2. What does the a on the top left of the 'Hamburger menu' mean? Any idea?

See screenshot:

Capture.PNG

The 'a' means it's an aura build. It's basically another window manager.

https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/design-documents/aura-desktop-window-manager

Chrome dev has been updated to version 31. Two things I'm noticing:

 

1. It uses its own scrollbars rather than native ones now.

2. What does the a on the top left of the 'Hamburger menu' mean? Any idea?

 

See screenshot:

 

attachicon.gifCapture.PNG

 

During early snapshots I do get some build which changed scrollbar to like this one but it changed after a while, I think their Aura desktop is in field trail phase, and you are lucky to get it. LOL!

The 'a' means it's an aura build. It's basically another window manager.

https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/design-documents/aura-desktop-window-manager

 

 

During early snapshots I do get some build which changed scrollbar to like this one but it changed after a while, I think their Aura desktop is in field trail phase, and you are lucky to get it. LOL!

 

That explains it then. Thanks.

Aura has some nice yet not too glaring or obvious animation tweaks, they look nice, and possibly just the placebo effect, but things seem smoother with it

 

I must admit I do like the new fancy animations.

 

The "Aura" thing has completely broken metro mode though :(

 

It looks and works great, apart from one thing.... you can't type anywhere :p

 

I also wish google would follow the guidelines for a windows 8 app, but no, they do as they please as usual.

 

post-279758-0-25253700-1377705612.png

Anyone knows when the Angle D3D11 backend will be re-implemented? The 'enable-d3d11' flag is no longer present since version 30. I'm using 31.0.1613.1 canary Aura btw.

If I open about:gpu in my Chromium snapshot, it shows me that due to some driver workarounds d3d11 is disabled. So it will come back once these will be fixed.

And in the latest build (31.0.1612.2) Aura is gone again. Wasn't ready for prime time yet I suppose.

 

Hope they get it fixed up soon, looks quite interesting :)

I thinking now Aura is sticking ON with M31:

Read this commit message:

 

Because we've been shipping Aura to canary for a while. And because force compositor landed 40 hours ago and things seem ok. See https://codereview.chromium.org/23874016/ This also allows to see perf numbers for Aura. This has happened before see for example r204698, r211007 and 214056 as an experiment but this time it might stick.

 

https://codereview.chromium.org/24164002

The latest dev build (31.0.1632.7) is still using Aura. It also introduces a new styling for menus:

 

attachicon.gifChrome menus.png

 

They enabled it by default for M31. So I think even official release will also have it unless big performance regression or something not shows up.

What is Aura? Is it the "a" on the settings button?

 

Yes the a is part of it, if I remember correctly it's Google's homebrewed compositing engine, like to better enhance graphic capabilities, especially in ChromeOS

What is Aura? Is it the "a" on the settings button?

Yes, it indicates that.

It is more like hardware accelerated  UI and it replace all Windows native styling on radio button etc and add its on.

Yes, it indicates that.

It is more like hardware accelerated  UI and it replace all Windows native styling on radio button etc and add its on.

 

that would explain why since the a showed up the fans go wild when i have chrome open, it also uses a tonne of system resources now (about 300Mb per service running)

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