Google announced the Chrome Web Store recently, which is an open marketplace for websites and web-based games that you can install as applications on your browser. It’s like the Android App Market but for apps on the web.
Here is a guide to tell you how it works.
What Are Chrome Web Apps?
Chrome Web Apps are nothing more than regular web sites, optimized for Chrome and then wrapped up with a pretty icon and installed in your browser. Some of sites and games can also be purchased through the Chrome Web Store for a small fee, though most of them are free.
Once you have installed or purchased one of the web applications, Chrome will keep the applications synced across every computer using the Chrome browser, so it’s like having your entire OS stored on the web.
How To Use Google Chrome Web Apps?
Go to Chrome Web Store, find an app(in our example it’s NY Times) you want to install and click the install button(if it’s non-free then you will be prompted to purchase through the Google Checkout process).
After a few seconds, you will see a shiny new icon on your New Tab page, which is where all of these applications live. You can get back to your application list at any point by opening a new tab, and making sure that the Applications section is expanded.
Once you launch one of the applications, you will notice a difference. This New York Times reader is optimized and obviously designed to work well in Chrome, with loads of customization ability, and a rich experience for navigating the news.
If you are paying attention, you will notice that the Chrome version of NY Times is nothing more than a URL, which means you could easily browse to www.nytimes.com/chrome in any browser that supports HTML5 and get a similar experience. This is the case for most of the apps in the Chrome Web Store, since they are just based on regular web technology like HTML5 and Flash.
