Google preparing to launch theme gallery for Chrome

Last week, information was spread that Google planned to implement proper theme support within their Chrome browser. Just recently, people have discovered, in the developer builds of the browser, that the company has built in the theme support already. It was unclear how they'd plan to display said themes, though many suspected the obvious choice of an online gallery; now, however, TechCrunch is reporting that this has been all but confirmed, with several themes already having been discovered.

TechCrunch states that the themes will be available at this link, which has obviously yet to go online, but you can already preview it if you have the very latest build of the Chrome browser. If you open a new window or tab, and click the 'X' button to remove previously visited sites, and eventually the theme page will show up (though again, you're unable to actually visit it properly yet). As you may be aware, Chrome has actually had theme support for a while, but this was a far from elegant solution. It involved directly replacing certain files in certain folders, and it was no fun task to get back to the original style either. It's fantastic to see that now the browser will be able to support this officially, and will help them compete against Mozilla's already well established theme community for their browser, Firefox.

The latest build of Chrome supports push skinning, so if you head over to this link, you can test a couple out. The theme.crx file is the "Camo" theme, and theme2.crx is the "Snowflake" alternative. They're very basic themes, but there's certainly fantastic potential for the future. Expect to see this develop steadily in the coming weeks, building up to the official release of the gallery.

Enjoy!