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Google Previews Chrome Web Store — An App Store For The Web
- naner 16y agoAre apps HTML5 "open-standards" only? Flash use in apps OK? How do payments work? Does the app store work with Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc? I've got a million questions!
- stanleydrew 16y agoVic said chrome app store apps are just regular web apps, so I think anything that is fair game on the web is allowed in probably.
- ryoshu 16y agoThey demoed a Flash game (Plants vs. Zombies) and a Unity3D game (Lego Star Wars), so you can use plug-in based applications.
- aboodman 16y agoHello, my name is Aaron, and I will be your question answerer for today. - Anything that works in Chrome can be an app. Flash apps are OK (one of the demo apps at the keynote, Plants vs Zombies, was a flash app) - We haven't finalized exactly how payments will work. We know it has to be good, because it needs to be better than what you could do yourself. - The web apps in the store will most likely work with Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc, because those are pretty modern browsers that implement most of HTML5. But the tight integration with Chrome (the "install" experience) is Chrome-only, at least for now.
- glhaynes 16y agoI don't understand the last point: if I can only purchase and install them from Chrome, how do I run them in another browser? Just point the non-Chrome browser at the (un-DRMed?) local install after purchasing/installing with Chrome?
- aboodman 16y agoApps are essentially a metadata wrapper around a URL^. The payment authorization is done server-to-server. Thus you could buy an app in Firefox and authorization would still work fine, the UX just won't be as nice. ^ We are also considering supporting fully packaged apps that are completely offline, like Chrome extensions are today -- these won't work in other browsers because they don't understand our package format.
- warfangle 16y agoWill you make the spec for the package format open, so other browsers would be able to implement support for fully packaged apps?
- aboodman 16y agoAll of chrome is open source and the format is already documented -- other browsers are welcome to implement it, or just take the code if they want.
- blasdel 16y agoUsing bundled packages for offline support is entirely the wrong strategy. The coupling is too tight even before you start trying to use the same format for multiple browsers. You should just copy Apple and just make it easy to save web pages as local apps, though you might want to explicitly offer with an infobar when there's a manifest available. What they already look for is all you need: <html manifest="..."> and window.applicationCache <meta name="application-name"> and <meta name="application-url"> <link rel="icon" sizes="..."> or <link rel="apple-touch-icon">
- papachito 16y agoHere they explain how they do it http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/developers_guide.html#live http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/developers_guide.htm...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- fjabre 16y agoPayments would be tricky I'd think. Take apps like Highrise or Mailchimp for example. They already have their payment backends working just fine. Would they be forced to integrate with a Google pay system if they wanted to get into the store?
- aboodman 16y agoI think they would just post their app as "free" in the store and handle payments themselves. Or support both payment systems if the distribution is worth it to them.
- DenisM 16y agoPlease make sure to support subscriptions. Thanks.
- trimagination 16y agoWhen is the replacement for Gears going to be released? I really miss it :(
- blasdel 16y agoGears was the alpha implementation of the work that went on in WHATWG. All the Gears APIs (except for WorkerPool) were refactored significantly and integrated into the spec that became HTML5.
- 83457 16y agoWill there be support for one login to multiple apps? Would be useful to essentially have a Chrome Apps login that then provides auto-login/off for the other apps installed on Chrome
- Detrus 16y agoWhat about the NativeClient and Unity3D apps in other browsers? Users will have to have NaCl installed as a plugin?
- stanleydrew 16y agoIt's now becoming very clear that the year of Linux will never come. It is obviated by a cross-platform free web browser that gives you access to an open web "OS." For now, Chrome (or Chromium) is that browser. Google snuck around the free operating system problem by changing what "operating system" means.
- jshen 16y agoI agree, but come to the opposite conclusion. The year of linux will come, but people want know or care what linux is (except the nerds).
- orblivion 16y agoThat day will come as soon as we're all using Chrome OS.
- stuntmouse 16y agoI would argue that the age of Unix as an end-user OS is already here. See iPhone and Android sales figures. Also, WebOS, etc.
- jshen 16y agoyeah, linux is too narrow. All of my devices are now Unix. Mac Desktops, Ipad, Iphone, and I use linux for servers. I haven't touched a windows box in many years. I've never used vista or windows 7.
- iseff 16y agoMy startup, AppStoreHQ (http://www.appstorehq.com http://www.appstorehq.com), has been private alpha testing a mobile web app (HTML5) app store for the past couple months. It's been working out great and having Google come in for standard web apps should be a big wind in our sail, I think. Our mobile web app store focuses on distribution and monetization of developers' work. Here's an example app (it's an HTML5 frontend to foursquare) called fortysquires: http://www.fortysquires.com http://www.fortysquires.com And it's purchasable from AppStoreHQ: http://www.appstorehq.com/fortysquires-mobilewebfoursquareclient-html5web-196344/app http://www.appstorehq.com/fortysquires-mobilewebfoursquarecl... It's also open source (so you can see how simple the API to interact with us is): http://github.com/iseff/fortysquires http://github.com/iseff/fortysquires
- csmeder 16y ago"having Google come in for standard web apps should be a big wind in our sail, I think." I'm not sure I understand, Isn't google now a direct competitor. They are now competing with you, recurly, autorize.net and every other billing company. Everyone will now use google checkout to pay monthly fees and their Gmail user name to sign into web apps?
- iseff 16y agoA couple quick thoughts pop in to my mind: 1) A rising tide lifts all boats. I suspect this isn't a zero-sum game. 2) Chrome Web Store appears to be more geared towards desktop web apps. We're solely focused on mobile web apps. This is a key differentiator as the use case, experience, and expectations are all different. But Google pushing web apps as a legit form of apps will help us as we push mobile web apps as a legit form of mobile apps.
- jasonlotito 16y agoValve isn't the only place you can buy games online. iTunes isn't the only music vendor. They might be the biggest and most popular, but they aren't alone. =)
- gchucky 16y agoA fair amount of people have complained that they switched to Chrome from Firefox because FF is overly bloated, takes a long time to start up, and so on. Seems to me that a browser that also runs separate apps like this would take a considerable hit in load times and performance.
- jonknee 16y agoChrome does really well to make sure that one tab doesn't interfere with another. Furthermore these paid apps would only load when you want to use them. Why would running a paid app in a tab have anything to do with startup time or performance?
- jasonlotito 16y agoThey are web apps. Basically, web pages. The idea is basically an extension to Chrome's existing Application shortcuts option in Chrome.
- neovive 16y agoThis appears to be more of a way to help developers showcase their apps with the option for payment integration.
- jasonlotito 16y agoYes. But it's not just that. The key is that the user is buying an app that essentially get's "installed' onto his computer like a traditional application. I'll be interested into seeing what happens if a user wants to install an app while browsing with IE. Will the App store download and install Chrome, and set Chrome up just to run the app?
- tdonia 16y agoiPad compatible?
- robotron 16y agoCan the iPad run Chrome?
- borisk 16y agoIt can't of course and it won't in the future. If for no other reason, Chrome is written in C++.
- neurotech1 16y agoSafari is based on Webkit, which is also part of Chrome
- 83457 16y agoStore = Yes, Apps = Yes, Install = No
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agoThis is really great and I've been waiting for GOOG to do this for a while. The web is the dominant platform for the future. Having companies like Google making rich HTML5 apps become the standard is a huge boon. Some have already asked us how this plays into Cloudomatic long term. Like Iseff said, it's a big wind in our sail. Not just ours or appstorehq's but for web app devs as a whole.
- percept 16y agoThe Singularity Is Near.
- percept 16y agoUh, this was meant in the "Wow, totally cool!" sense and not the "We welcome our new overlords" sense.
- Ionic_Walrus 16y agoso its a browser extension implemented in javascript ? how is Chrome Web Store different from https://addons.mozilla.org https://addons.mozilla.org ?
- alexro 16y agoSoo, it looks like the store is kind of advanced app review directory where instead of urls you click on shortcuts which smartly translate the url into an icon + metadata inside the browser, i.e. "install" the app, and if need be charge you for that. Seems like a problem will be with having to pay for something which you can get for free by just going to the web site directly. If on the other hand developers don't allow direct access to the apps via normal urls, then obviously the competitors will do. So, the store will be filled with loads of free apps, promoting paying versions. That's probably how its best to be used.
- orblivion 16y agoIt's almost like Google is making it ok to charge for web services again.
- rdj 16y agoI wonder what long term effects this has on domain names. If people need only to remember how to use iTunes or Chrome to find and use an app, will you really need your app.com domain anymore?
- neovive 16y agoA brandable domain name would still be beneficial for marketing, demos, documentation, etc.
- hello_moto 16y agoI don't quite understand the concept of this AppStore for the web. What kind of apps does it sell? a stand-alone Flash based game/app? stand-alone web-app (with possibly no server behind it, pure JS)?
- 83457 16y agoURLs
- rooshdi 16y agoOur startup, Favetop (http://favetop.com http://favetop.com) provides similar shortcut functionality for web apps along with direct site search capabilities. We also allow users to save all their favorite online media alongside their web apps with the ability to share these with friends and followers if they choose.
- anigbrowl 16y agoDid anyone else notice that in the introductory docs for developers, the last example shows a Y combinator branded app? http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/images/tabstrip-apps.png http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/images/tabstrip-apps.png
- blasdel 16y agoApps are represented in the tab bar as "pinned tabs" (which it looks like they updated the styling of), the user probably has HN set as one.
- aboodman 16y agoThere are lots of finicky details to get right about entrance/exit from apps. Hacker news is an example of one important class of apps that we hope to make work well.
- blasdel 16y agoAwesome! This is the first real confirmation that Google is going to ship Native Client to end users as a supported technology. They'd intentionally kept it off the agenda when introducing ChromeOS before, so it wasn't clear to me that they were going through with it. I need a VNC/RDP client and an terminal emulator with SSH as NaCL apps. I'd prefer if they were implemented in Go as wrappers around standard C libraries, exposing JS APIs to the DOM where at least the UI chrome would be implemented, and with the settings/data saved in HTML5 LocalStorage. It's been on my to-do list for a while, but maybe now that Google is promoting it someone else will fill the hole so I don't have to :)
- Calamitous 16y agoThis is pretty sweet, and a natural progression of Google's entry into both the handset and browser markets. Of course, if the Android market is any indicator, nobody's going to be making a lot of money on this thing any time soon. Still a great idea, though
- BoppreH 16y agoThe "video" at https://chrome.google.com/webstore https://chrome.google.com/webstore is just a picture for me. Failed HTML5 video attempt? Anyone else had this problem? Obs: I'm using Chrome.
- PostOnce 16y agoYou mean the thing that is in fact a picture, and says "Please check back for the video later" in big letters in the middle of it?
- BoppreH 16y agoHaha, that one. I thought it was the title of a slide and didn't even give it a second thought because the video was not playing. Funny how attention works.
- PostOnce 16y agoFYI: it's up now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKaJ6jEPXGE#t=3m28s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKaJ6jEPXGE#t=3m28s