Google is doing some pretty interesting things with Chrome apps. Last year in September they launched Chrome apps for the desktop, that allowed you to use Chrome apps offline to behave more like a natively installed program, and as of today Google wants to take the experience they have provided to the users on Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS, and deliver that same idea to the Android and iOS users. As of today, Chrome apps for Android and iOS were launched. Using a special toolkit, developers now have the chance to basically turn their Chrome app into a native Android friendly app that can be submitted to the Play Store for access to users, by packaging up the Chrome app into a native app shell that allows for the submission.
If you’re someone who develops apps for Chrome and would like to take the opportunity to either create Chrome apps for Android or bring over you’re already existing apps, you can do so with one of two different ways that Google has provided to get the job done. First, you can use the Developer Tool that’s used to develop Chrome apps to get the app to run on an Android device, which seems pretty straightforward since this is a tool used to develop Chrome apps, and it also alleviates the need for having to install an IDE or install the SDK for the mobile platform. The second option if you wanted to get things started and package your native Chrome apps for Android is to use a command line or IDE to get the app running either on a device or through an emulator. Both ways allow for packaging up your apps to be ready for Play Store submission, but with the Developer Tool at least you don’t have to install anything extra to get everything going. However if you’re already familiar with using the SDK and IDE procedures, than you could still choose to go about packaging your app this way.
If you have been thinking about developing apps for Chrome, or already develop apps for Chrome, with Google’s introduction of this new feature to port Chrome apps over to mobile you can have the opportunity for your apps to reach more people. If you want to get things going you can find all the information you need at the Chromium apps Google Group, and at the following links here, and here.
Source: TheNextWeb