How many of you have thought that it’d be great to have an app for Chrome or ChromeOS that you’d like running but would love quick access to without having to have a tab devoted to it? How about something for Google Music? Well, developer Paul Eiche has released a Chrome extension which does just this called Panel View for Google Music.
To use the extension, you’ll need to first enable the #enable-panels flag in chrome://flags :
By now I am sure most of you will have seen the panels that popup when using Google Hangouts. Panels are used as containers that allow a user to multitask without leaving the view of their current application.
Once the Panels flag is enabled, simply head over to the Chrome Webstore and install the extension. The extension when opened from the shortcut in the browser, is always-on-top of the viewing window. When minimised it drops down to the right hand side of the shelf along the bottom.
As a user of Google All Access Music this has definitely replaced the dedicated tab and shortcut I was using. While the extension basically loads the website in a panel the design is very well thought out and reminds me a lot of the startlingly user-friendly Google Music app on Android with the menus hidden to the left hand side of the panel. It offers full functionality of the Google Music website although there is still issues uploading music without a music manager on ChromeOS as well as issues with changing which account it accesses.
The extension is very early in its development and the developer is answering questions and taking suggestions over at Reddit.
If you are a user of Google Music I highly recommend this extension. I for one will be using it extensively and will eagerly follow its development.
This is nice and works well on normal windows desktop chrome too