Google flexes Chrome's muscle with amazing experiments

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 19 Mar 2009 at 08:51

Dubbed Chrome Experiments, the site includes 19 extraordinary animated games and widgets that push the browser to its limits.

One experiment, called Browser Ball allows you to "throw" a bouncing ball from one browser window to the next.

Twitch creates a series of mini-games played in tiny browser windows, in which you need to complete one task before you can move on to the next.

Google Gravity, on the other hand, collapses the normal Google homepage into a pile at the bottom of the screen. However, you can still enter search terms into the box and watch the results drop from the top of the browser window.

All of the experiments have been designed to work with Chrome, although we found that the majority also worked perfectly fine with Firefox 3.0. Users are presented with a humorous warning message if they attempt to access the experiments in rival browsers, with users forced to click on a button saying "I'm willing to risk it" or "I like to live dangerously".

The experiments clearly highlight the enormous potential for creative website designs, although few offer anything more than light entertainment.

Whether Microsoft will find Google's showboating amusing is a different matter altogether...

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