Okay. You may have noticed that the old fix for disabling the annoying new extra-white menus on Google Chrome no longer works (adding –disable-new-menu-style to the shortcut), as in build 28 they have hardcoded it and removed the option to get rid of them. This seems a bit of a spiteful move, so let’s respond in spite.
First, go into Chrome, go to your settings, go to Advanced, and disable the Google Update plugin.
Now uninstall Chrome completely.
Go here:
http://www.oldapps.com/google_chrome.php?old_chrome=12288
…and download that version of Chrome, which is still build 27.
Now do the same thing you did before; right-click the shortcut and add “–disable-new-menu-style” to the end of the shortcut field.
It works, trust me. Thank God.
There’s an easier way to do it and you don’t have to uninstall Chrome:
Preferences window:
old_chrome.exe” –disable-new-menu-style
Reverts the browser to the saved copy of v27 and correct the menu issues.
I tried this, but it didn’t work — but putting the comment up because I have seen it mentioned in other forums. Good luck to anyone who tries it, and thank you for the info! It seems a bit of a sadistic change to *force* it on us, doesn’t it…?
Thank you for posting my comment.
I’ve heard that it doesn’t work in some versions of Windows. It worked for me on XP.
Also, if you pulled the information from the thread in the Google Product Forums, the ” is missing from the line. It didn’t work for me until I added that in.
And yeah – it is. I really believe that this was a spiteful gesture on the part of some of the dev team because of the complaints all year since last year.
I switched from IE to Chrome when IE stopped being user-friendly. I perfectly capable of doing the same – switching to another browser — when I run out of workarounds. Google needs to realize that even free product changes can cost them in bad press and user attrition from paid products. Several IT people from different businesses on different websites have said that they’re going to switch everything in their businesses away from Google products because of this issue.
I agree. It’s a stupid little issue, but given the parity of browsers out there, I was on the verge of switching back to IE just to get rid of this *one* tiny little annoying thing (the menus). I honestly don’t know why it bugs me so much; it just does. Technically, it should make it easier to see things, and all that, but it just…bugs me. I can’t take credit for this workaround, by the way — someone told me on Twitter how to do it, so I shared here as soon as I tested it and made sure it worked. I’m not positive that it’s necessary to disable Google Update, as 27 does not appear to have a Google Update plugin. But yes, it does seem a petty little thing to force on people, doesn’t it? I mean, at least give us the non-hardcoded switch to turn it off, eh? Why not?
Update:
Apparently on 7/24 Google listened and finally released an updated to Chrome that decreased the bookmarks spacing (the problem that existed since last August).
I’ve heard that the menus are still the overly bright white though.
Correction: It’s still not available for the “stable” release yet. Sorry for the misinformation.