4. Requirements:
"Port our iOS/Android app to Windows"
"Just support Windows 7 and that's
enough"
But market demand changes very fast!
We should expect Macs, Chromebooks also in
future.
5. Our app to port from Android/iOS
● Native framework + webview
○ Popular architecture for smartphone apps
○ UIWebView (iOS), WebView (Android)
Native
Framework
webview
OS service,
Storage, etc.
Interact with event callbacks,
JavaScript injections, etc.
Needed something like this, which works on a
desktop client. Great if it works on multi-platform
6. Platforms we considered
● Full-native
● Full HTML5 on a browser
● JavaFX
● Native View + kind of a common backend
● Chromium Embedded Framework
● PhoneGap (Native WebView + common
backend)
● Titanium
● Chrome App
(formerly known as Chrome Packaged App)
7. Chrome Apps
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/about_apps
● HTML + JavaScript
(PNaCL, Dart also available)
● 90% normal HTML5 app
○ Additional chrome.* APIs are loaded in JavaScript
namespace
○ <webview> tag to have another browser in the app,
which runs in a separate context from its parent app
● Launches its own window
○ Not within any browser's tab
● Launcher is bundled with Chrome
○ The app runs on Windows/Mac/Linux/Chromebook
8. Chrome Apps User Experience
● User Installs an app via Chrome Web Store
● Update happens automatically
● User launches the app when it's needed
9. So, looks great…!
● Works on multi-platform
● Don't have to worry about how to
distribute/update
● Programmer can use popular web
technology. No need to learn any new
framework or language
● Has a webview
10. Let's take a look
https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-app-samples
12. Interesting Features
● APIs same as chrome extensions
○ Local storage, etc.
● Low-level system services
○ USB
○ Serial
○ Network Communications (raw TCP/UDP sockets)
○ Bluetooth
14. Problems I faced (1)
● No interface to access OS-level secure
storage (like KeyChain)
● CSP (Content Security Policy)
○ No eval, no inline scripting.
○ AngularJS already has a csp-mode which doesn't
use evals
● No easy way to interact with webview
○ Can inject JavaScript but access limited to the DOM
tree only. No access to the page's namespace (can't
use jQuery for example)
● No WebDriver yet
○ Can't test it's automation… (still seeking how to do it,
help is welcomed!)
15. Problems I faced (2)
● Documents are not very much organized,
and it's sometimes not accurate
○ http://stackoverflow.
com/questions/25883534/chrome-apps-webview-find-
method-is-undefined
● Not stable very much yet
…But it's improving!
16. (Coming next, may be)
● Chrome Apps WebView pitfalls
● Testing Chrome Apps
● Wrapping Chrome APIs as an AngularJS
service
