News broke last month that Google was working on bringing Chrome web apps to mobile devices, with a plan to have something ready in beta form by January. Google has delivered; the company released a tool set today for developers to port their apps to iOS and Android.
As previously reported, Google has developed a compatibility layer using the open source Apache Cordova toolchain to allow programmers to wrap their apps in a native app shell and distribute the app on the App and Google Play stores. The tool also ports the necessary Chrome APIs the web apps would typically need on mobile, like notifications and access to local storage. The toolchain is currently an early preview, so improvements are surely on the way.
Google announced plans to bring Chrome Apps to the desktop back in September, and debuted apps for OS X last month.
Update: An earlier version of this post stated that Chrome Apps are not yet available for Windows. That was inaccurate, and the post has been updated.
Comments
I believe you mean Chrome?
By judahism on 01.28.14 4:50pm
Chome as you are
as a friend
By thunsaker on 01.28.14 5:52pm
As you were
By y.a.k on 01.29.14 11:14am
what
By imo- on 01.29.14 12:10pm
/facepalm
By RedR on 01.29.14 12:16pm
As I want you to be
By CrashOverride on 01.29.14 12:19pm
As an old enemeeey
By MethodMax on 01.30.14 4:45am
I wonder what will their performance will be like… most web apps are just bloated versions of regular websites. :/
By House, MD on 01.28.14 4:51pm
There are a couple really good ones: Google Keep, Pocket…I think that’s it for me?
By Ovo671 on 01.28.14 5:08pm
There’s Text, Codebox, Google Keep, Pocket, Google+ Photos, 500px, Caret, Wunderlist, CIRC, The Mill…there’s lot of great apps for Chrome.
By redbullcat on 01.28.14 5:38pm
Is Keep really a web app? If so I’m blown away.
By mikedg on 01.28.14 5:52pm
keep.google.com or Google Keep in the Chrome Web Store. The one in the Web Store is a Chrome App, keep.google.com is a web app.
Anything you access on an internet browser that is ‘used’ could be considered a web app. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, OneDrive, Netflix…all web apps. But not all Chrome Apps.
By redbullcat on 01.28.14 5:56pm
Keep on Android is a Dalvik Android Application. With the announcement today, they could retire the “native” application (not to be confused with the practice of using JNI to run architecture native code), and recompile the packaged application, thereby using the same codebase for all platforms. The website is still separate, but it likely uses much of the same underlying code as the packaged app.
By RyanBeesley on 01.28.14 6:58pm
iCloud’s Notes is also a web application. Nothing unusual.
By DERSS on 01.29.14 10:31am
I haven’t used a Chrome app in a very long time. I don’t know why I should- a lot of the apps seem to be of very poor quality. Maybe I’m missing something?
By landon.barnett.3 on 01.28.14 4:51pm
Google launched the Chrome (Packaged) App initiative a few months ago. Since then Chrome Apps have gotten a lot, lot better.
By redbullcat on 01.28.14 5:40pm
Needs to go the otherway, android apps >>> chromeOS
By Joe O'Brien on 01.28.14 4:52pm
yes exactly, when i read this that was my first thought too.
so can someone enlighten me, as someone who has not used chomeOS, what is this bringing to the table?
By ferrari187 on 01.28.14 5:33pm
Android applications are not HTML5 applications. They aren’t even Java applications, although they largely share a common JVM byte code and the language specification has the same syntactical structure and functionality. Android applications are a superset of Java 1.6.
Chrome Packaged Applications are HTML5 applications packaged so that they can be distributed and are exposed through a common entry point, namely the Chrome App menu. Since the underlying language is standard and cross platform, the code is largely portable to other browsers and if not packaged, it will run in Firefox, Safari, IE11, and any other modern browser, but it would feel like it was in a browser. During packaging, a developer can strip away the chrome (meaning the browser UI, not the browser itself) and the published application will look like any other application running on that platform.
ChromeOS takes this even further. Since the applications don’t run like web pages, they feel like more traditional applications that you might find in Windows or OSX. ChromeOS uses them in the same way you would use more traditional applications. ChromeOS does not have plugins like ActiveX, and only integrates Flash and a PDF viewer as part of the browser. Importantly it has no Java JVM.
The common runtime environment across all of these systems is Chrome. Considering all the factors, it makes sense making packaged applications that will run across all of these platforms. The opposite, running Android applications cross-platform, is considerably more difficult and cannot be written to be cross-platform… But hopefully you can now see how this works well in the reverse direction.
By RyanBeesley on 01.28.14 8:17pm
Java platform that works on everything from microcontrollers to old Sony-Ericsson phones to PC already allows cross-platform programming and applications.
So Google needed to create something that their own only for competitive (against Oracle) reasons. There was no need to create Chrome Apps at all.
By DERSS on 01.29.14 10:35am
That would destroy pretty much every ethos and principle of Chrome OS.
By redbullcat on 01.28.14 5:48pm
ChromeOS has no principles, it’s pointless.
By Britoid on 01.28.14 6:04pm
Apple or Microsoft?
By Litten on 01.28.14 7:28pm
I understand what you’re trying to do with that baited response… but any tablet OS is more useful than chromeOS
By simbadogg on 01.29.14 12:18am
It has no principles only if you willfully ignore them. Chrome OS’s philosophy is that apps should be cross platform, and that the web should serve as the app platform.
A native platform’s philosophy is to have a package with executable code and all resources locally installed and locally run and occasionally use APIs to access the web if necessary, and sometimes to update the app the package needs to be replaced.
Chrome OS goes the other way. An app is a website installed with permissions to access the hardware and saves some of its resources for offline use and while some data is saved locally, all of it is always synced to the cloud and updates are delivered just like a website.
By Zecharixs on 01.28.14 8:08pm