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Two Easter eggs hatch in Chrome for Android

Google programmers tucked a couple amusing tricks into their browser for Android devices. One shows off tabs, and the other hardware acceleration.

stephenshankland.jpg
stephenshankland.jpg
Stephen Shankland principal writer
Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science Credentials
  • I've been covering the technology industry for 24 years and was a science writer for five years before that. I've got deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and other dee
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Stephen Shankland
2 min read
Open more than 99 tabs in Chrome for Android, and a tab button that doesn't have room for a three-digit number just gives you a smile.
Open more than 99 tabs in Chrome for Android, and a tab button that doesn't have room for a three-digit number just gives you a smile. screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

A day after Google released its Chrome browser for Android, enthusiasts are finding the Easter eggs tucked away into the software.

One draws attention to the fact that the browser doesn't have the eight-tab limit of Apple's Safari on iOS. The browser shows a button showing the number of tabs; tapping the button takes a person to a page with all the tabs showing. But there's only room for two numeric digits in the button.

Flipping up pages shown on the tab select page of Chrome for Android flip around if you slide them upward five times. If you look closely you can see an embossed version of the Chrome logo on the "back" of the browser.
Flipping up pages shown on the tab select page of Chrome for Android flip around if you slide them upward five times. If you look closely you can see an embossed version of the Chrome logo on the "back" of the browser. screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

So what happens when you open your hundredth tab? The 99 turns to a smiley emoticon. Yes, I tried it, and yes, it's a pain opening 100 tabs.

The other Easter egg, which I like better, concerns what happens when you're looking at the page that shows all your tabs. You can swipe up and down to flip through the stack of tab windows, but when you've flipped up to the top, the tabs poke out a bit to visually indicate they won't go any farther.

But if you swipe up five times in a row, the entire stack does an animated flip. Three cheers for hardware acceleration. If you look at the back of the stack as it flips around, you can see an embossed Chrome logo. Check below for a video.

Easter eggs are often intended to be a surprise--and in this case, there was even a surprise for Chrome Vice President Linus Upson.

"The team didn't tell me about this one," he said of the spinning-page trick with the Chrome logo in a Google+ comment. "I knew there was a 100-tab Easter egg, and dutifully spent five minutes finding it."

Chrome for Android is in beta, but Sundar Pichai, the senior vice president in charge of the project, told CNET News he expects to release the final version soon. "My expectation is two to three months, but we will be quality-driven," he said.

The browser includes PC synchronization, a lot of Web standards, and Google's V8 JavaScript engine, but it only works on Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest and still rare version of Google's mobile OS.

Via Tobias Eisentrager and Arvid Bux