Google has been pushing Chrome a lot ever since its inception. Starting from a simple browser that could just render webpages real fast, Chrome has spread to being a full-fledged OS (Chrome OS), having offline apps for desktop while still maintaining its fast speeds.
As much as I like Firefox, Chrome has become the browser of choice of people owing to Google’s simplistic approach of making it simply the better product than any out there.
Now, Google has taken one more step to propel Chrome apps in the mobile arena. Google has created a tool chain based on Apache Cordova. Apache Cordova is an open source mobile development framework for building native mobile apps using HTML, CSS and Javascript.
What this toolchain does is that it wraps the chrome app in a native application shell. This way, the creator of this app can distribute his app via Google play and Apple Store. Google has provided documentation- developer workflow– for the developers to begin their work.
It is indeed a great development and while the toolchain is in developer mode right now, with the might of Google behind, we should expect it to become polished pretty soon. With the help of this toolchain, we should see many Chrome apps finding their way into our mobile phones.
According to Google’s blog– “We provide a simple developer workflow for packaging a Chrome App natively for mobile platforms. You can run your Chrome App on a device or emulator using the command-line or an IDE. Alternatively, you can use the Chrome Apps Developer Tool to run your app on an Android device without the need to install an IDE or the mobile platform’s SDK.”
Adding to this, many core Chrome APIs have been made available to Chrome apps running natively on mobile. You can read more about it on their blog.
Google is killing two birds with one stone with this step here.
One, the number of quality apps in Google Play should see an increase with this as many Chrome apps have new home now. Also, it brings Chrome closer to Android which might create a convergence point in the future. In addition, making Chrome apps has become more lucrative now.
What is your opinion on it?