Google's Chrome OS is slowly but surely shaping up as a decent operating system for those users who live inside a browser. The latest stable release of Chrome OS brings minor, but important, design changes to this cloud based operating system.

One of the highlights of this release is the new design for apps. Instead of Mac like UI for displaying installed apps it now shows apps in a compact way.

Chrome OS Now

Chrome OS earlier

It now also has a 'search' option so that if you have quite a lot of apps installed you can easily search for the app you are looking for. This features was already available in dev and beta channels for a while.

That's not all in this release, Xiyuan Xia, Software Engineer and Apps Connoisseur of Google writes, "This week’s stable release also includes visual improvements such as a redesigned Cloud Print dialog and the ability to add custom wallpaper (for example, a picture of your cute little morkie)."

One major improvement is the ability to save files directly to Google Drive. Earlier the files were saved in the download folder and then you had to move it to the drive.

Another nice enhancement is the support for 3-finger tap/click as middle button.

Some of the major changes include:

•     New Print UI - please see the blog post for more details
•     Now users can select their own custom wallpaper
•     New, offline-capable Google Docs app
•     Update Adobe Flash to version 11.3.31.230
•     Flash Access Support
•     Seccomp Flash sandbox
•     New Shill connection manager
•     WiMax support in Shill
•     LTE Support for modem manager
•     Support Standard USB audio devices
•     Support wireless (bluetooth and others) Gamepads
•     Update GTalk Plug-In to version 3.3.3
•     Update Netflix Plug-in to version 2.0.5
•     Kernel rebased to 3.4

Missing Social Network Integration
One feature on my wishlist is better integration with cloud and social networking service. If there is a file I shold be able to share it with my social networks such as Google+, Twitter of Facebook. At the same time it will be useful if there is integration with other cloud services such as Dropbox as Google Drive is yet not available for Linux.

The team has also added audio support for USB and HDMI, additional sandboxing security features, and many more bug fixes.

My wife is a pure Google Chromebook users (she used a Mac and Ubuntu before this) and now I don't hear a single complaint from her. Earlier she always has one or the other problem with Mac or Ubuntu. There is nothing that can go wrong in a Chromebook. In my opinion it is a perfect device for those who spend all their time inside a browser.