According to the latest reports, Microsoft really wants Google Chrome to use Windows 11-themed scroll bars, or at least the company is making sure users can enable it by turning on the flag in the experimental flags menu Newly updated scroll bar. Microsoft is incorporating this feature into Chromium, and Chrome may soon adopt it.
So what exactly is a smooth scroll bar? According to Microsoft, the modern scrollbar is inspired by its fluid design, which means that the scrollbar on the right side of the browser will be a very thin line. It pops up when you hover over the bar, making for an uncluttered or “modern” experience.
At the same time, Microsoft’s smooth scroll bar provides more space to present the content of the website the user is browsing. Microsoft has been working on fluid designs and overlay scrollbars since the summer of 2021, and the tech giant has promised to add this feature to Chromium.
It looks like the browser will be updated to smooth scrollbars in the near future, as a new patch in Chromium Gerrit adds the foundation for smooth scrollbars.
“This CL adds the basic functionality of the smooth scroll bar and implements unit testing. The smooth scroll bar functionality depends on the OverlayScrollbar functionality state,” Microsoft said in the code commit.
This suggests that the new smooth scrollbar will be tested in Chrome soon (presumably from the Canary channel), but there is no specific time plan yet.
Chrome recently received a major update
Google recently released Chrome version 102 stable with major improvements to web apps, tabs, and more. As part of Chrome 102, Google added new keyboard shortcuts to speed up web page navigation. Using the new shortcut “Ctrl+Shift and Page Up or Page Down”, it is now possible to rearrange tabs without using the mouse.
For PWAs, Google has enabled a new feature that allows developers to declare that their web applications are able to open certain files. Therefore, the web application now appears as an option in the “Open With” menu.
There are also new navigation APIs that allow users to easily navigate within web applications. The API promises smooth transitions between pages in a web application without loading the entire page.