Google today launched Chrome apps for iOS and Android, which will see Chrome-based applications encased in a native application shell that allows them to be distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. As now, Chrome-packaged apps are written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS but are capable to launch outside the browser, access APIs and can work offline. The developers can access an early developer preview of a toolchain based on Apache Cordova which is an open source platform for building native mobile applications with HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Using the toolchain, the developers can wrap existing Chrome Apps with a native shell, which transforms them into applications that can be sold on the App Store.
Google is making a wide variety of Chrome APIs available for these apps, including many ways to authenticate users using push messaging, OAuth2, storage and alarms. On Android, the toolchain also supports payment service and rich notifications. In addition to it the developers also get access to the full range of APIs available through Cordova itself, which includes a huge range of services for every popular mobile platform. To get started, developers on all platforms need to install the Node.js version 0.10.0 or higher, as well as a number of other required development tools, which depends on which platform they are developing for and on.
Apache Cordova is an open-source mobile development framework for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It essentially packages the Chrome App in a native application shell. The tool should allow the Chrome apps developers to port and send their apps to the Google Play and the Apple iTunes app stores for distribution.
Also See : Chrome’s new iOS update
Developers have the opportunity to begin working with Apache Cordova and their Chrome apps beginning from today, but it may take some time before consumers see Chrome applications in the App Store. It will be interesting to see just how Chrome apps developers embrace the new porting tool for their apps. We do think that just how useful the Chrome apps would be on any mobile devices like smart phones and tablets but, initially designed for either the browser-based functionality or recently, as native, offline desktop app.
Author : Iman Majeed
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