{"id":861,"date":"2008-09-03T01:08:06","date_gmt":"2008-09-03T00:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/861-chrome-the-developer-angle.html"},"modified":"2008-09-03T01:08:06","modified_gmt":"2008-09-03T00:08:06","slug":"chrome-the-developer-angle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/861-chrome-the-developer-angle.html","title":{"rendered":"Google Chrome: the developer angle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The real purpose of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/chrome\">Chrome<\/a> is to run web applications. Google would like it to be Google applications, of course. Here\u2019s a few things I noticed.<\/p>\n<p>1. The <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/apis\/v8\/\">V8 Javascript engine<\/a> in Chrome is <a href=\"http:\/\/fernandoacorreia.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/02\/chrome-is-fast-javascript-benchmark\/\">really fast<\/a> \u2013 thanks to just-in-time compilation and other optimizations. This is important, because it removes some of the advantages of plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight, which also do just-in-time compilation.<\/p>\n<p>2. Chrome includes <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/apis\/gears\/\">Gears<\/a>, which enables offline functionality and other useful services, like a local database engine.<\/p>\n<p>3. This is really part of Gears; but it\u2019s worth noting separately. The Gears <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/apis\/gears\/api_desktop.html\">Desktop API<\/a> lets you create application shortcuts \u2013 without further permission, apparently. In Chrome this is surfaced as a Create application shortcut dialog:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/images\/createshortcut.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Note that this is a browser dialog, not a web page dialog. <\/p>\n<p>Why is this a big deal? Well, I recall Adobe\u2019s Kevin Lynch telling me that the usability issue around navigating to an URL in order to run an application was one of the motivations behind the development of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/air\/\">AIR<\/a>, Flash on the desktop. Google reckons it is easier to deal with the usability issue, than to create a separate desktop runtime.<\/p>\n<p>4. Web applications started from shortcuts have no browser furniture. Just the web page in a window. There are probably other ways to get this effect too. I noticed that if you type Ctrl-T while in one of these full-window Chrome pages, which normally starts a new tab, it actually opens a second Chrome window, not just a new tab. Google wants that shortcut to behave like an application, not like a web browser.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"wlWriterSmartContent\" id=\"scid:0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:bacf5faf-fb52-4133-95f0-6f58a6d80dad\" style=\"padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; float: none; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px\">Technorati tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/google+chrome\" rel=\"tag\">google chrome<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/gears\" rel=\"tag\">gears<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/adobe\" rel=\"tag\">adobe<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/javascript\" rel=\"tag\">javascript<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The real purpose of Chrome is to run web applications. Google would like it to be Google applications, of course. Here\u2019s a few things I noticed. 1. The V8 Javascript engine in Chrome is really fast \u2013 thanks to just-in-time compilation and other optimizations. This is important, because it removes some of the advantages of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/861-chrome-the-developer-angle.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Google Chrome: the developer angle<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,80,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google","category-software-development","category-web-authoring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}