
How to make installable web apps for Chrome - danh
http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/
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dpcan
(Sorry, I think this turned into a trolling ramble possibly...)

I cannot decide if this matters or not. Seriously, will this matter? I have
web apps, I have web apps that would rock in a desktop environment where I
didn't have to host the data, or could at least "sync" it with the desktop.

But does it matter? Will Chrome matter? Will telling people to install Chrome
to install my app be worth it? Will other browsers follow suit?

Obviously this has so much going for it. First, it's being launched as a
"store" and not just an "add-on" system. I haven't written my apps for Firefox
because I need it to financially make sense. Creating something for another
"store" does make sense.

I can now write apps for Android, iPhone, Palm, RIM, Windows, Mac, iPad, web-
based, and other cell phones. Now add "browser-desktop" into the mix.

This means I have to write my app in Java with Android's SDK, Objective-C,
(uhm?), Java, .Net Pascal C etc, more C, more C, PHP/Ruby/.Net/Python, more
Java, HTML5? Uhgo.

Good Lord!!! Can I just write one app in Flash or Java and be able to
distribute it everywhere PLEASE???

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stanleydrew
You have to stop thinking about apps as standalone things. We are quickly
getting to the place where apps are all comprised of a client and server
exchanging data over http(s). If you build a robust api to your data, then you
can build many many client implementations to get at it on any platform. The
Chrome platform doesn't require anything beyond what you're already building
for your web client. Unless you're not building a web client, in which case
why would you be worried about the Chrome web store at all?

Note that there are tons of things to figure out in terms of network latency
and up/downtime, some of which are addressed by the newer features of html5.

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gourneau
One of those icons looks awfully familiar :)

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d0m
I was surprised to see it there, next to gmail!

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aboodman
Hacker news is an important use case of ours :)

(edit to reduce snark)

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papachito
I did an installable app for HN here <http://blog.ricodigo.com/2010/5/23/how-
to-create-chrome-apps>

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wwortiz
So it appears this is windows only for now according to this:
<http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/>

Which seems so weird considering this is what will make chrome os, at least in
terms of the web as a desktop sort of thing.

Though they probably did this for other reasons such as a larger userbase to
test with or some reason unknown to me, hopefully I'll get to try it soon when
it is ported to the other OS's.

~~~
papachito
No, it works fine on Linux too, I even made an app for HN that I posted a few
days ago <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1371515>

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elblanco
Great, more stuff to jam horizontally along my tab bar. Perhaps it's time to
start thinking about putting things vertically?

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demosthe
Isn't Chrome's "Create Application Shortcuts" better than this already?

