Chrome app launcher developer preview | Hacker News Reader

Chrome app launcher developer preview

blog.chromium.org

59 pointsmikeevans30 comments

I'm a Chrome OS user so I've had some time with this launcher. I'm not sure why, but for me having a launcher versus a bookmarks bar is a huge psychological difference. I really do feel like these are "apps" not websites, even when I could just as easily navigate to them in the URL bar. It makes Chrome OS feel like any other operating system when my brain SHOULD say "hey, this is just a browser".

I jumped the ship and am now using Chrome OS for school work. I never realized how much of my life is browser centric. My personal experience is I prefer launcher over bookmark bar. For some reason bookmark bar looks cluttered to me. When I want to open websites like Gmail, I just search launcher and it's there. And I have a clean interface without bookmark.

Mind if I ask what you are running Chrome OS on? I have been interested in picking up a Chromebook, but the reviews for them are very bad. It seems that locking up, crashing and even flat out dying after a couple of months is surprisingly common.

Running it on the ARM Chromebook which has been absolutely perfect so far (~2 weeks). No locking up or crashing at all. Great battery life, keyboard as good as my MacBook Pro and a great trackpad for the size. Overall very, very happy with my purchase given my use case (just a second computer for class/travel).

I had Chrome OS running pretty smoothly on a Sylvania G Meso (a cheap netbook). I got a bootable disk image here: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/

I really, really want to write my application as a Chrome packaged app--I love all the advantages that come from developing for the web, and I love appearing like a native app to my users--but most of my users don't use Chrome, and I can't really force them to switch. They want to keep using what they're using. What should I do about this?

I think this feature might be a good start, but it would be great if you could install the App Launcher without installing Chrome. That is to say: Chrome team, have you ever considered converting Chrome into a platform runtime ala the JVM, and then making your browser just one of the "packaged apps" that runs atop it? :)

This is remarkably similar to what you described: https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

Ah! I had heard of several similar things (Chromium Embedded, etc.) but this one is new to me. So that's what Light Table is written in!

I am kind of sure that Google will ditch Java and go for native web apps for it's operation systems. They will unify ChromeOS and Android experience by getting rid of Java on Android and making web apps running natively on the OS.

I see a lot of signs from Google that they want to do this. The "X-Phone" project, this effort for pushing packaged Chrome web apps and even that new Android status in Google campus are all signs of it.

I am very happy that this is happening!

One point, much to Oracle's dismay, Android is not Java. Java is used to do dev, but the phones themselves run a completely different VM (Dalvik).

What status?

And using Dart is a great way to achieve this goal :)

This is the problem: Omnibox is so powerful that I don't even use app launcher on my chromebook.

I'm the same way. But I've also really wanted to be able to run web pages as their own Windows app. Like have them occupy a space in the windows task bar, which it looks like this may provide for. I don't really know why I want this, my brain just has a strong urge to have certain app-like pages have app-like prominence, and have their own focus outside of being another tab in Chrome.

Why the need to package apps like this? Going to a web app with HTML5 caching will automatically make your app work offline. The installation IS going to the URL. With the added benefit that you can easily update the app by invalidating the cache. Just give web apps more localStorage, more caching space and indexedDb and viola!

Because an icon will invite user to use the app. Most of those apps are exactly what you described.

Packaged apps are needed because web apps can't access OS level information.

The biggest reason we have these apps is not really OS Level information, it is offline. We want developers to build and deliver great offline first experiences, and on the Web we just don't have that (even with AppCache).

I also like the content security policies of packaged apps. A web page can load new code at will and frequently does so. Packaged apps typically come bundled with everything they need to run, and can't directly load scripts from the web. Also HTML5 app cache is pretty terrible.

Why exactly is it terrible? The one bad thing I know is that you can only invalidate the whole cache, not individual resources, but what else?

Because people like apps. The app wrapper makes people comfortable with the idea of using web apps in place of desktop apps.

The real reason is that the packaged apps have access to a privileged API. That let you make things that you can't do in webpages.

As a web dev, that's what you get.

As Google, you get a non-standard API that, if it picks up, will ensure you get 100% platform control (and marketshare too, but really, its about platform control)

I would do some research before spouting this claptrap about 100% platform control. There is huge effort going on in the W3C and Sysapps groups to get this whole priviledged access and installable apps standardised.

The biggest thing about Chrome Apps is not the new API's, it is that we are getting developers to think about building good offline installable apps.

Annoyingly windows only.

Windows already was able to turn apps into desktop shortcuts, osx/linux still has none of that.

It works on Linux. It's only Mac that lacks that feature.

We are working on it. Mac has some interesting things that we need to do to get it working.

A somewhat unrelated conceptual question: if Chrome is putting web apps alongside desktop apps, what does that do for usability of apps on a platform in general? If a web app was created to emulate a native OS UI, wouldn't that be taking a bit of a step backwards (in terms of recreating all the widgets) compared to just coding in the native toolkit in the first place?

I guess what I'm really asking is, what's Google's plan for unifying the Web Store apps visually the way Android and iOS do with their UI kits?

I'd rather have a standard API than "chrome.*" to be honest.

everyone would, but standards take a long time, and lead with experience based of existing implementations.

Until Google encrypts there .crx file that holds the source code I don't think anyone can use this to sell apps. Right now the only protection Google offers is a signed .crx file and that can easily be by passed. http://stackoverflow.com/a/4493712/1231

Google needs to encrypt all .crx that come from the Web Store.

I find it interesting to see the differential in response to posts like this vs posts on the firefox phone OS threads.

Here they seem to be: "Why would I want a website as an app???"

In the firefox phone OS threads they seem to be: "This is how all apps should be build, pure web apps!!!"

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