Are Packaged Apps Usable in the Chrome Web Store?

Question

I just stumbled across the new Chrome Packaged Apps page (http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/trunk/apps/about_apps.html)

I really, really want to use this for an app, like NOW. However, to test the apps you have to manually enable experimental extensions in chrome.

Will I be able to submit an app that uses these experimental extensions, and will users be able to use them right now?

Thanks!

Answer 1

In general, you can package any app you make and self-host it; just make sure to tell your users to set the appropriate command-line flag to allow the experimental APIs (--enable-experimental-extension-apis). The Web Store, however, does not accept anything that uses experimental APIs. From the chrome.experimental docs:

...the Chrome Web Store doesn't allow you to upload extensions that use experimental APIs.

Feel free to start developing your app now, though. With any luck, by the time you're done with development, the APIs you need will be stable (and hopefully they won't have changed too much). Sometimes experimental APIs can disappear outright, but I'd bet that the APIs that Google mentions explicitly on their packaged app page are here to stay.

Answer 2

No, there is no plan to have Chrome Web Store accept apps that use experimental APIs.

Currently, even if you don't use experimental APIs in your (new) Chrome Packaged App, you won't be able to publish it, since the new Chrome Packaged App is in developer preview.

So, the plan is to move the experimental APIs out of experimental state when we are confident they are stable enough. Hopefully, when CWS starts accepting the new Chrome Packaged Apps, most of today's experimental APIs will not be experimental anymore. To speed up this process of API stabilizing, your feedback on these APIs is very valuable. Please, use http://crbug.com if you find bugs.