Google launched Chrome apps for Android and iOS, available to mobile developers using the Apache Cordova tool chain.
Cordova is an open-source mobile development framework for building native CSS, HTML and JavaScript mobile apps, which will wrap Chrome apps in a native shell for developers to submit to the Google Play and the Apple App Store. Google software engineer Andrew Grieve announced the expanded app availability in a blog post on Tuesday.
Google introduced a “new breed of Chrome apps” last September that work offline by default and act like native apps on the host OS, but until now they were only available on desktop platforms.
Developers can also access a range of APIs supported by Cordova, as well as many of the core Chrome APIs, including:
• identity: Users can sign using OAuth2 without prompting for passwords.
• payments (currently Android only): Virtual goods can now be sold within the mobile app.
• pushMessaging: Messages can be pushed to the app from a server.
• sockets: Data can be sent and received over the network using TCP and UDP.
• notifications (currently Android only): Rich notifications can be sent from the mobile app.
• storage: Key-value data can be stored and retrieved locally.
• syncFileSystem: Files backed up by Google Drive can be stored and retrieved.
• alarms: Tasks can be run periodically.
Another resource is the Chrome Apps Developer Tool that can run apps on Android devices without installing an IDE or the mobile platform’s SDK.
For more information, read the developer workflow about packaging Chrome apps natively for mobile platforms.
