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Google’s Chrome web browser is great for netbooks, thanks to its minimal navigation bar which takes up significantly less screen real estate than Firefox, Opera, or Internet Explorer. If you have a netbook with a 1024 x 600 pixel display, you want a web browser that makes as much room as possible for displaying web content.

But I’ve found that Chrome isn’t all that easy to use if you’re using a touchscreen tablet-style netbook like the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t. That’s because you have to rely on scrollbars on the side of the screen to navigate through web pages. The only web browser with built-in Windows 7 touch navigation support is Internet Explorer — and that’s only if you’re using Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.

But James Kendrick spotted a nifty extension for the Google Chrome browser that adds touch navigation. It’s called chromeTouch, and once it’s installed, you an navigate through Google Chrome by dragging or flicking any part of a web page — much as you would with a smartphone web browser.

ChromeTouch has a few settings that make it easier to use on small tablets or netbooks as well, including the option to hide the scrollbars altogether, giving you even more screen real estate for web content. And if you want to be able to select text on a page without accidentally scrolling up or down, you can just tap the chromeTouch icon in the URL bar to switch from Full to Auto mode, or turn off the chromeTouch extension altogether.

You can check out my hands-on video after the break.