Google's various products and platforms don't exactly have a common visual language - not yet at least.
That's part of Google's plan for the future, and today we got a glimpse of what Chrome OS looks like with a more Android-like interface.
It's part of what Google's François Beaufort calls Project Athena, a user experience overhaul he said the Chromium OS team is working on.
The screenshot he shared shows a vertical card-based multitasking interface that resembles both the current Chrome tabs system on Android devices and certain aspects of the upcoming Android L update's Material Design UI.
Convergence
This screenshot only shows a single aspect of Athena, and it's clearly a work in progress.
"Athena is a brand new project the Chromium OS team is experimenting with in order to bring a new kind of user experience," Beaufort wrote. "As you can see below, the first draft consists in a collection of windows with some simple window management."
In Google's second-quarter earnings call on July 17 the company discussed the ongoing convergence of its various platforms, including Chromebooks and Android.
The company reported in June that Android apps will soon work on Chromebooks, and it will certainly help if they have similar UIs.
In the meantime Chromium users can follow Athena for themselves "by simply checking out the chromium source code and compiling the convenient 'athena_main' target with ninja -C out/Release athena_main," Beaufort wrote.
Via 9to5Google
