Google Chrome developer build adds full screen option

The Google Chrome browser is designed so that the toolbars take up as little space as possible, letting the web pages you're looking at take up most of your screen real estate. The bookmarks toolbar is easily collapsible, and the tab bar is all the way at the top of the browser window, where you'd normally have a program title bar.

But while the default Google Chrome view takes up less screen space than Firefox or Internet Explorere, there's one thing that each of those browsers can do that Google Chrome can't: Allow you to make the toolbars disappear altogether and browse in full screen mode. All you have to do is hit F11 and Firefox or IE will expand to the size of your display. Hit it again, and your toolbars and menus reappear. If you try the same thing in Chrome, nothing happens.

But it looks like future builds of Google Chrome will gain this feature. The latest developer build of Chrome adds a full screen view, which you can access by hitting the same F11 key you would use in other browsers. In order to try the developer version, you'd have to build the program from source, so you might want to wait until Google adds this feature to official build of Chrome before giving it a try. But it's nice to know it's on the way.

Update: As Nick points out in the comments, you can download the latest developer updates to Chrome by using the Google Chrome Channel Changer. But you should be aware that these updates may be less stable than the official updates that Google sends out on a less frequent basis.

[via WebWare]

Tags: chromium, full-screen, fullscreen, google-chrome