Google adds touch-friendly features to the latest Chrome Canary test version

It looks like Google is now planning to add quite a few touch-friendly features to its Chrome browser. According to The Verge, while checking out the latest nightly Canary build, a new slide-to-navigate feature can now be seen on the browser. This new feature lets users swipe left or right to go backwards and forwards on Internet pages. This is similar to the same feature seen on Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8.

Another feature that Google is reportedly working on is the pinch-to-zoom feature. This is available in an “enable pinch scale” option in the Chrome Canary flags, according to the source report. While the feature is reportedly in a more experimental phase when compared to the swipe navigation, the former reportedly works as you would expect it to, by zooming in websites using your fingers. Google has also supported the onscreen keyboard fully in the desktop version of Windows 8 by displaying the same when the user reportedly taps the address bar or text boxes.

Google has added some touch-friendly features to Chrome Canary

The need for touch in Chrome has definitely grown after the launch of the native Chromebook Pixel as well as the increasing number of Windows 8 machines. Google released a “Metro” version of Chrome for Windows 8 last year, but the version was mainly a container for Chrome as opposed to being a finger-friendly version. These new features may be minor in their application, but it can be expected that once they are out of the testing phase, they will definitely help make Chrome more user-friendly on the latest touch-enabled devices.