How to make installable web apps for Chrome

http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/

by danh • 16 years ago

34 12 16 years ago

code.google.com

gourneau• 16 years ago

One of those icons looks awfully familiar :)

d0m• 16 years ago

I was surprised to see it there, next to gmail!

aboodman• 16 years ago

Hacker news is an important use case of ours :)

(edit to reduce snark)

wwortiz2• 16 years ago

So it appears this is windows only for now according to this: http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/

Which seems so weird considering this is what will make chrome os, at least in terms of the web as a desktop sort of thing.

Though they probably did this for other reasons such as a larger userbase to test with or some reason unknown to me, hopefully I'll get to try it soon when it is ported to the other OS's.

papachito2• 16 years ago

No, it works fine on Linux too, I even made an app for HN that I posted a few days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1371515

dpcan• 16 years ago

(Sorry, I think this turned into a trolling ramble possibly...)

I cannot decide if this matters or not. Seriously, will this matter? I have web apps, I have web apps that would rock in a desktop environment where I didn't have to host the data, or could at least "sync" it with the desktop.

But does it matter? Will Chrome matter? Will telling people to install Chrome to install my app be worth it? Will other browsers follow suit?

Obviously this has so much going for it. First, it's being launched as a "store" and not just an "add-on" system. I haven't written my apps for Firefox because I need it to financially make sense. Creating something for another "store" does make sense.

I can now write apps for Android, iPhone, Palm, RIM, Windows, Mac, iPad, web-based, and other cell phones. Now add "browser-desktop" into the mix.

This means I have to write my app in Java with Android's SDK, Objective-C, (uhm?), Java, .Net Pascal C etc, more C, more C, PHP/Ruby/.Net/Python, more Java, HTML5? Uhgo.

Good Lord!!! Can I just write one app in Flash or Java and be able to distribute it everywhere PLEASE???

wwortiz2• 16 years ago

Well you can write apps in HTML5 and javascript and distribute to iphone, android, and up to date browsers while coding the backend on your server to whatever you want and this is essentially what web apps should be.

Edit:

If you really want to actually target all environments flash really no longer will be an option and it may or may not be a good thing but if your apps are as great as you think they are pick the biggest market develop specifically for that market and if they are really that awesome spread out to other environments.

stanleydrew• 16 years ago

You have to stop thinking about apps as standalone things. We are quickly getting to the place where apps are all comprised of a client and server exchanging data over http(s). If you build a robust api to your data, then you can build many many client implementations to get at it on any platform. The Chrome platform doesn't require anything beyond what you're already building for your web client. Unless you're not building a web client, in which case why would you be worried about the Chrome web store at all?

Note that there are tons of things to figure out in terms of network latency and up/downtime, some of which are addressed by the newer features of html5.

Charuru• 16 years ago

>But does it matter? Will Chrome matter? Will telling people to install Chrome to install my app be worth it? Will other browsers follow suit?

I don't think the idea is to tell people to install Chrome to install your app. It's just another 'retail' front for your app that can give you more exposure.

Also, I don't think the Chrome App idea is primarily designed for developers. It's designed for users, so that they have a central place to browser the next generation webapps. Clearly it's very good for Chrome users, but it might still not be worth it for developers.

demosthe• 16 years ago

Isn't Chrome's "Create Application Shortcuts" better than this already?

elblanco• 16 years ago

Great, more stuff to jam horizontally along my tab bar. Perhaps it's time to start thinking about putting things vertically?

How to make installable web apps for Chrome

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