

Chrome Web Apps - Deviatore
http://techsplurge.com/2400/11-chrome-web-apps/
Chrome Web Store has recently been opened and here's a collection of Best apps for Chrome available in the Chrome Web Store for social networking, photo editing, entertainment, Porductivity and much more
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user24
I don't like the way Google are, basically, lying about what Chrome is. "You
need Google Chrome to install apps". No you don't. Most of them work just fine
in any other browser. And for the functionality that isn't present, what's
better, writing a fallback for other browsers or locking other browsers out?

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mcmc
I think you may have missed the point of the Web Store, which, like Apple &
the iPhone, is predicated on the idea of selling applications that are
compatible with the platform -- in this case Chrome. There will obviously be
some applications that are easy to port to other platforms, depending on the
specific APIs used, and some that will be more difficult. (For instance, you
can't actually use an application that _depends_ on the WebSocket rev76 API in
Firefox 3.5/4, Opera, or Safari 6.0 or less.)

If a developer has an application that works in other browsers, then hey, they
should go distribute those apps in more places than just the Web Store. But it
only really makes sense to position the Web Store as a Chrome-specific
application repository b/c Google is only really guaranteeing that these apps
work in Chrome.

Google isn't lying, much in the same way that Apple isn't "basically, lying"
when they fail to point out that you can play Angry Bird on Android just as
easily as you can play it on an iPhone.

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user24
> the Web Store ... is predicated on the idea of selling applications that are
> compatible with the platform ... Chrome

My point is that for the last decade we've been trying to move towards a web
where any browser can be used perfectly well, and Google are now trying to
reverse this trend in order to lock users in to their platform and make it
unnaturally difficult for developers to port their 'apps' to other
'platforms'.

When did a browser become a platform?! I thought the web was the platform? The
damage that this does in the short term is that the web is divided into the
Chrome-enabled web and the rest of the web. If the idea catches on then the
medium term damage is that the web is divided into the Chrome-web and the
Firefox-web and the Safari-web and so on and so on.

> For instance, you can't actually use an application that depends on the
> WebSocket rev76 API in Firefox 3.5/4, Opera, or Safari 6.0 or less.

There was a time when CSS3 wasn't supported in some browsers. We didn't make a
'Firefox app store' for people who wanted CSS support in their web apps, we
made fallbacks for older browsers with the knowledge that the other browsers
would catch up eventually. That's a good approach because over all it makes
for a more open, platform-agnostic web. What Google are doing with the web
store is destroying that openness in order to push their own proprietary
platform.

> Apple isn't "basically, lying" when they fail to point out that you can play
> Angry Bird on Android just as easily as you can play it on an iPhone.

That's totally different - the Android version is a completely different piece
of code to the iPhone one. Whereas <http://nytimes.com/chrome> works just fine
on firefox.

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alexro
This trend of creating proprietary app stores is a bit worrying, to say the
least

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balac
Whilst I am into the idea of the Chrome Web Store, at the moment it seems to
just be the "Chrome Web Directory", Yahoo tried that and look where it got
them...

I am more interested to see if sites can really make any money from the store,
I guess we need to see Chrome OS get some traction first.

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pavs
I don't think Yahoo is the best example of "since yahoo failed..." argument.
There are very few things yahoo didn't fail in.

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zackattack
i just installed the infinite scroll one, autopatchwork. works well on google
and HN.

