We already knew that Google is working on new tools to bring Chrome Apps to the mobile operating systems. Last month we reported that Google is actively building these tools and soon might launch. Google has just announced that they are expanding the reach of these Chrome Apps to mobile platforms with an early developer preview. Google has developed tools based on open source mobile development framework, Apache Cordova.
For those who don’t know Chrome Apps are web apps that till now only worked on desktops, these apps also work offline. Now with the new program developers of these Chrome Apps can bring their them to the mobile platforms. The new tools announced today allow Chrome Apps to be wrapped on a native shell making them suitable for running as native applications on Android and iOS. These Chrome Apps are written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
The toolchain wraps your Chrome App with a native application shell and enables you to distribute your app via Google Play and the Apple App Store. 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.
Many Chrome APIs are now available to Chrome apps running natively on mobile. If you are a developer and interested in bringing your Chrome app to mobile platform check out Google’s announcement post.
