Update for Chrome dev channel today added support for “Packaged Apps” and they’re enabled by default, so what are these packaged apps? these apps are capable as native apps but safe as web apps, they’re offline by default because their code and resources are installed locally on users Computer, and these are built on web technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. We can say these as modified web apps but they’re more native-like, they don’t run inside Chrome browser.
Packaged Apps are like Native apps and they don’t have Chrome UI
“Packaged apps have no traditional chrome: the Omnibox (address bar), tab strip, and other browser interface elements no longer appear. Like native apps, they don’t live within the browser. When launched, packaged apps can open in windows that look like this (and you can style your windows in all different ways)”
Once installed users have full control over these, they can open, close, and system can shutdown apps at any time to improve the performance, these can be uninstalled fully by the user. Developers can build powerful media apps that interact with network and hardware devices, examples are
- Shells (VMWare, Citrix, SSH, RDP or VNC clients)
- Music/video streaming
- Photo/video/music editing
How to develop packaged apps
Developers can use the same code, framework and tools of web platform to write these apps, “ Some browser features have been removed, other web APIs have been disabled or changed to improve security and programming practices.
New features have been added to help you build more native-like apps. The app container and programming models control how packaged apps look and behave. These models aim to provide users with a more native experience. Powerful APIs have been added so your apps can have native-like capabilities, and a serious security model is enforced to make sure these APIs are not abused”
You can find more details here.