When Google introduced Android 4.4 KitKat to the world, one of the benefits they touted was Project Svelte, a concerted effort to minimize the memory footprint to encourage the system’s deployment to older or less powerful hardware. Trying to make Android run easier on more hardware is not the only way Google is trying to reduce fragmentation and in effect “flatten” the world. They are also working on efforts that blur the line between the desktop and mobile platforms like Android and iOS. The latest example is news that Google is poised to enter the beta stage in January 2014 with “Mobile Chrome Apps,” a project to build a toolkit for developers so they can more easily deploy the apps they have built for Chrome on the desktop over on mobile operating platforms like Android and iOS.
Chrome packaged apps are written in HTML, Javascript and CSS. They have the ability to launch outside the browser, they will work even when offline, and they are able to access some APIs that other web apps cannot get to. Android and iOS native apps are typically developed using a different set of tools. However, Apache Cordova enables developers to deploy hybrid native apps using the same HTML, Javascript and CSS tools they use for the desktop versions of Chrome apps. Google is working on a toolkit that will handle steps like modifying design for mobile devices, identifying bugs, working around other limitations that may exist, and testing.
The bottom line for developers is a way to streamline the process of coding apps that can run on several different platforms. Another benefit may be encouragement for consumers to settle on a single app to use for a task no matter what device is used.
The current effort can be found in a GitHub repository maintained by Michal Mocny, a Google software developer, that is named Mobile Chrome Apps. At this time the documentation suggests Android 4.x will be supported initially, but older versions, as far back as 2.2 or 2.3, may eventually be supported. Meanwhile, iOS support is only listed as TBA.
source: TheNextWeb
Come comment on this article: Chrome apps on Android and iOS may be as close as January 2014
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