Chrome users can now visit the Chrome Web Store and install Chrome Web Apps, which behave as if they are traditional, locally installed applications. The apps have been written using Web Technologies like HTML 5, CSS and JavaScript.
The applications will have the ability to function offline and will work with connected devices, as well as update themselves automatically. This escape has been in the making for several years. In 2012, Sundar Pichai, the senior VP of Chrome and Apps announced that the search engine was developing a new way to package apps to run locally.
Even Mozilla has been talking about its own variant on the idea, Open Webs Apps, since 2011. Erik Kay, the engineering director at Google in a blog post said, “Today we’re unveiling a new kind of Chrome App, which brings together the speed, security and flexibility of the modern Web with the powerful functionality previously only available with software installed on your devices”.
The Chrome Web Apps are also a familiar vision of utopia for developers, as they have promised the ability to write apps once and run them anywhere. This is also a promise which is made by technologies like Flash and Java.
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