Following the removal of the notification center last year, Chrome is now getting rid of the app launcher in Mac, Windows, and Linux. It will be a slow process, but the rarely used launcher for Chrome and web apps will be fully removed for all users in July.

Google is releasing the beta of Chrome 47 today that introduces as number of new features across platforms including new splash screens for Android web apps, improved management for push notifications on the desktop, enhanced multitasking and more.

For the new splash screens, developers will be able to take advantage of splash screens when their web apps are launched from an icon saved on the homescreen. Google points out that  “apps can take a few seconds to load” and presenting a nice looking splash screen will “allow apps to show something meaningful to users as the app loads, improving perceived performance” for users.

In addition, Chrome 47 beta brings an improved push notification experience for desktop users on Mac, Linux, Chrome OS and Windows by introducing auto dismissing notifications:

“Sites such as social media or email can generate a large number of push notifications that take up screen space and aren’t particularly relevant unless viewed soon after posting. The new version of Chrome now allows developers to configure automatic dismissal of desktop notifications, improving the experience for these kinds of notifications. Sites can set NotificationOptions.requireInteraction to indicate the notification should remain onscreen until the user dismisses it.”

And lastly, the 47 beta release brings what Google refers to as “Cooperative multitasking with requestIdleCallback()”, something developers can take advantage of to improve performance by allowing apps to run during “idle time” when resources aren’t being used by other tasks.

Google has more info on the release here.

Google this morning made tickets available for its Chrome Dev Summit held at the Google Quad building. The event runs for two days between November 17th and 18th and is exclusively designed to help Chrome engineers and developers build better, faster and more attractive web apps. The company warns that places are limited and anyone seeking to go should register for their ticket as soon as they can.

Google’s Chrome Dev Summit will feature short talks, collaborative discussions and code labs among other events. For those who can’t make it in person, Google will stream all presentations live and make them available to watch on YouTube afterwards. Keep an eye on the Google Developers YouTube channel to stay updated during the event.

Tickets to this November’s event are available now from Google’s Chrome Dev Summit home page.