Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From Chrome Apps to the Web

blog.chromium.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 111 posts

Re: From Chrome Apps to the Web

#2

Post by bwang29 »

Discloser, developer of Polarr for Chrome here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-edito...

To us as developers, the biggest advantage of Chrome Store is discoverability, reviews, and store front organizations. As a fairly new developer, we also have a web app, but it is late in the game and there is no way to out-SEO the existing players through Google Search. Chrome Web Store was the place where we felt a fair game where we can compete on product quality and getting better reviews and out-rank the same competitors who also have chrome apps.

Re: From Chrome Apps to the Web

#3

Post by laksjd »

I've always been somewhat confused by chrome apps. How do (did) they differentiate themselves from extensions? Even Google seemed unsure about that as Hangouts has been available as both an extension as well as an app for quite some time.

As a user I'm really glad to see this move, along with the move towards android apps on Chrome OS since I'm hoping it will unify the Google-driven ecosystem a bit more.

Re: From Chrome Apps to the Web

#5

Post by hayksaakian »

I have a chrome packaged app

I built it about 4-5 years ago

Back then to get any kind of power you had to use a packaged app. Extensions either didn't have permissions needed to build a real offline first experience.

Nowadays service workers help with the offline role. I wonder how much permissions have been expanded to allow the same types of apps to be extensions.

Re: From Chrome Apps to the Web

#7

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bwang29 wrote: post #2

Discloser, developer of Polarr for Chrome here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-edito... To us as developers, the biggest advantage of Chrome Store is discoverability, reviews, and store front organizations. As a fairly new developer, we also have a web app, but it is late in the game and there is no way to out-SEO the existing players through Google Search. Chrome Web Store was the place where…

Don't you really only have that discoverability there because almost nobody is actually in the Chrome Web Store? For the most popular browser on the planet, Chrome's store is incredibly sparse.

I was always surprised Google didn't fold it into the Play Store as a separate category, now that it serves movies, books, etc. that aren't Android-specific. And the Play Store is a far more mature product than the Chrome Web Store.

Re: From Chrome Apps to the Web

#9

Post by Gaelan »

laksjd wrote: post #3

I've always been somewhat confused by chrome apps. How do (did) they differentiate themselves from extensions? Even Google seemed unsure about that as Hangouts has been available as both an extension as well as an app for quite some time. As a user I'm really glad to see this move, along with the move towards android apps on Chrome OS since I'm hoping it will unify the Google-driven ecosystem a bit more.

AFAIK, A Chrome app is a glorified bookmark + offline support. An extension can add buttons to the toolbar, manipulate web pages, etc.
Post reply on HN