Google debuts Chrome 28 beta with rich notifications for apps and extensions on Windows, coming to OS X next
Just two days after the stable version of Chrome 27, Google has announced the release of Chrome 28 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The biggest new feature is the addition of a notification center, although it’s only available on Windows for now.
“We’ve designed these notifications to be beautiful, useful and engaging,” Google says. They can be formatted to display text and images, as well as include actions directly inside the pop-up.
Here’s an example:
We’ve heard about the notification center on Windows since at least January. Chrome Canary for Windows received it in March, solidifying the speculation.
Yet a lot has changed since then. Here are how the notifications look like on Windows in the latest Chrome beta:
The Chrome blog specifically says “Mac support coming soon!” but we’ve known that already – earlier this month, the notification center showed up in Chromium for Mac. The Chromium blog meanwhile confirms further the notification center “will be coming to Mac OS X and Linux soon.”
Many believe the notification center is key to bringing Google Now to the desktop, which has also showed up in pre-release builds of Chrome as well as in Chromium.
More to follow.
