December 2014
Intermediate to advanced
274 pages
6h 8m
English
Content preview from Programming Chrome AppsBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Preface
Almost nobody reads past the first sentence or two of a preface, so I’ll say the most important thing right away: this book is about programming Chrome Apps, not Chrome Extensions or web apps in general.
Still here? There’s some more important stuff to know, so please continue.
Chapter 1 explains in detail what a Chrome App is, but briefly, its relationship to Chrome is the same as a Windows app to Windows, or a Mac app to OS X: an app that you install on the platform and that makes use of application program interfaces (APIs) unique to that platform. This would be obvious but for the fact that the platform in this case, Chrome, is better known as a web browser and most of the “apps” that you run on it are really just fancy web pages. I’m thinking of Gmail, Facebook, Amazon, and a zillion others. Hence the confusion.
Why consider programming a Chrome App at all? Here are two good reasons:
- They’re portable across all of the major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Chrome OS (for Chromebooks and Chromeboxes), and, with some restrictions, even Android and iOS.
- Although web apps are equally as portable, they can’t access the local computer as Chrome Apps can. The most important example of this is that Chrome Apps can access the computer’s filesystem, just as native apps can.
I’m unable to think of any other platform that offers these two advantages.
With the good comes the not-so-good. Here are the chief disadvantages of Chrome Apps:
- On desktop operating systems, they ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.