Back in August, Google released an update to the beta version of Chrome that brought new gestures to the browser. To switch tabs, instead of swiping from the side of the screen, you now have to swipe across the address bar. And to pull up all the tabs you have open, you now have to swipe down from the address bar. I even made a video showing these gestures. Well, today Chrome stable has been updated, and yes, these month old gestures that Chrome Beta users have been enjoying are now in there.

Why did Google change how the gestures work? Your guess is as good as mine. I didn’t necessarily think the old gestures were so bad that they warranted a change. And frankly, I don’t really see how these new gestures are any improvement since discovery is still a major pain in the butt.

That’s the real issue here. As we throw more and more gestures into operating systems and apps, who has time to learn them all? Sometimes on-screen buttons are a good thing, despite all the hype you hear about “natural user interfaces”. What’s so natural about an interface that you need to watch a video tutorial of to figure out how to use?