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A new breed of Chrome Apps

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Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#51

Post by devx »

alexandros wrote: post #3

Prediction: The much-anticipated convergence of Android and Chrome is near. These new Chrome apps are the programming model for the upcoming native Android webapps The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

Why? I'd rather see them push Android as a increasingly more mature OS alternative to Windows. And you'll be able to run Chrome on Android anyway.

What exactly are you expecting to get from the mythical "ChromeOS and Android merger", when you already have Chrome for Android?

The only major things I see ChromeOS has over Chrome for Android is the security model, which will be impossible in Android, since you need native apps, too, while ChromeOS will only ever work with "web apps". Changing that could mean its security model will suffer.

And the second one is the upgrade process, for all Chromebooks, coming straight from Google, every few weeks. That's ideal, but I doubt we'll see anything like that for Android even this decade.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#53

Post by astro1138 »

I've been hacking on a Chrome App for the past few weeks and have been wondering how to open a tab instead of a new window. That announcement leaves me confused: what's new exactly? Is it even possible that the new stuff has been in the docs for months?

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#54

Post by pjmlp »

alexandros wrote: post #3

Prediction: The much-anticipated convergence of Android and Chrome is near. These new Chrome apps are the programming model for the upcoming native Android webapps The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

> The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

Something needs to change, since the Oracle lawsuit, Java/Dalvik features have been frozen without any new update being officially communicated.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#55

Post by alexbell »

RivieraKid wrote: post #41
alexbell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? What if the apps are purchased seamlessly through the play store and can run on Android or in Chrome? I have a feeling they will add more and more Android device APIs to whatever is coming, until it has just as many as the Java APIs. I've thought for the past year or so that there is no way the future of Android app development is Java/Dalvik.

That's possible today - there are apps, that are basically web apps. But they usually offer inferior user experience. It's cheaper, but for the price of being worse than a native app. It's possible they will add support for other languages besides Java. Android is stuck with Java 6, which sucks...

That language will be web, I suspect. Perhaps Google will offer prerolled components specifically for Android? I strongly suspect that Chrome is the platform Google wants to push for client development now, with Android essentially as a shell for it. While web may arguably be "worse" on Android now, Google has a very large, talented engineering team who could change that relatively fast. Java is a dead end at this point for them I think as far as pushing client development forward. My personal preference would be Android development via Go lang, but I don't think there's much of a chance of that.

I am not a web developer BTW, I am primarily an iOS dev who has done ~6 months of Android work.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#56

Post by teleclimber »

pspeter3 wrote: post #6
alexandros wrote: post #3

Prediction: The much-anticipated convergence of Android and Chrome is near. These new Chrome apps are the programming model for the upcoming native Android webapps The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

That actually makes a lot of sense given their Android KitKat tagline which is "It's our goal with Android KitKat to make an amazing Android experience available for everybody." Google has used Play Services to update Android in the background. Since they also own Chrome, the more apps that live within Chrome the more apps are up to date and out of reach of other companies who would use Android for them, notably Amaz…

That kitkat tagline could mean absolutely anything. It could be a kid-friendly set of features, or a more efficient OS so that cheap devices can run well so people in 3rd-world countries can have Android too. It could also mean cat-friendly interface with paw-sized touch targets.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#57

Post by untog »

fidotron wrote: post #48
untog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merge of the android and chrome/web platform, that would keep the strenths of both, is basically impossible. Why do you say that? Add some APIs to the Android browser, allow it to open apps full-screen... there doesn't seem to be much more to it than that.

That's really not too different from what it takes to package HTML5 code into Android apps already, with the same result of apps with UIs that feel foreign to the system. The trend is not towards HTML5, but actually away from it. Quite honestly the Chrome Mobile team are swimming against the tide on this.

The trend is not towards HTML5, but actually away from it.

I'd argue that is because the functionality isn't there to make it competitive. So the Chrome Mobile team isn't really swimming against the tide, they're... whatever you do when you put things in the sea to adjust tidal flow.

Mozilla, too. I have a Firefox OS phone on my desk and while it's far from ready for end users, it is an impressive showcase of what you can achieve with HTML.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#58

Post by notatoad »

alexandros wrote: post #3

Prediction: The much-anticipated convergence of Android and Chrome is near. These new Chrome apps are the programming model for the upcoming native Android webapps The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

according to theverge, that's exactly the plan: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/5/4696618/google-chrome-apps-...

although in that article, they also claim chrome apps are going to come to iOS including availablity in the iOS app store, which sounds really really unlikely.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#59

Post by teleclimber »

devx wrote: post #51
alexandros wrote: post #3

Prediction: The much-anticipated convergence of Android and Chrome is near. These new Chrome apps are the programming model for the upcoming native Android webapps The next milestone I expect to see is V8 added alongside Dalvik as a first-class runtime for Android. Maybe in Android KitKat?

Why? I'd rather see them push Android as a increasingly more mature OS alternative to Windows . And you'll be able to run Chrome on Android anyway. What exactly are you expecting to get from the mythical "ChromeOS and Android merger", when you already have Chrome for Android? The only major things I see ChromeOS has over Chrome for Android is the security model, which will be impossible in Android, since you need nat…

> What exactly are you expecting to get from the mythical "ChromeOS and Android merger", when you already have Chrome for Android?

Seriously. I don't get this knee-jerk desire to have ChromeOS and Android become some sort of weird hybrid. They're two different platforms. Their combination isn't necessarily greater than the sum of the parts.

Re: A new breed of Chrome Apps

#60

Post by josephwegner »

talkingquickly wrote: post #15
josephwegner wrote: post #2

So, really, there's only two new features here: - Launch chrome apps directly from the desktop - Run chrome apps with out any of the browser toolbars Everything else is already possible in a regular chrome app.. Right?

For me the exciting bit is being able to access devices from them. E.g. I've been waiting for this for a while because you can write an app which communicates directly with an Arduino or any other serial device. This means that a lot of special purpose desktop apps communicating with custom hardware can be written as Chrome apps and take advantage of the speed/ ease of UI development of web apps. For one of the apps…

Chrome extensions have had access to external devices for a long time. It's not often used, but I've done stuff implementing chrome + arduino.

http://developer.chrome.com/apps/app_hardware.html

A quick google search shows: https://github.com/BertHartm/Chromeduino

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