As you might already know, Chrome Web Store opened a week ago. Having a keen interest in all things Google I could not resist and put up an app for amoebaRL here. Which took somewhere around 15 minutes to make. Turns out Chrome apps are pretty much the same as extensions. The main difference between the two is that you only have to have a starting page for your app while in the case of extension you have to define some way of displaying this starting page like putting a button on the toolbar. The app icon just appears in the apps list in the starting page after installation.
So I changed manifest file that defines the app (I already have an amoebaRL extension so it was trivial), submitted the zip file, edited the description and that's it. No silly approvals, no long discussions with the publisher, that's it. Well, you do have to pay $5 developer signup fee but I skipped even that, having made extensions before. There are probably some hurdles if you want to charge money for your app but apart from that it looks like a very promising digital distribution platform. There could also be a potential problem with Chromium not yet supporting apps, I haven't checked that out.
Okay, back to trying to think up an interesting design for Dr. West....
