Chrome Apps – How to create a Chrome app for your blog

There is no doubt Google Chrome is the world favorite web browser right now.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you would know my love for this browser. I am a big fan. If you visit Google Chrome web store, you will see lots of Chrome apps both free and paid apps. These apps are basically a way of easily accessing websites. For example, Google Chrome’s official Facebook app simply opens https://www.facebook.com/?ref=cws , the Gmail app opens https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/ etc.

So today I am going to show you how I created my own Google Chrome’s Netmediablog app which will open http://netmediablog.com on launching it.  It doesn’t require any prior experience of programming of any sort as this is very easy to understand. Now let’s get started…

How to create Chrome apps:

Create a folder anywhere on your computer

Create an icon of 128 x 128 px and name it icon.png, save it in the folder you just created.

Open your notepad, copy the code below and paste it on your notepad.

{

“name”: “Netmediablog“,

“description”: “Chrome app for Netmediablog“,

“version”: “1”,

“manifest_version”: 2,

“icons”: { “128”: “icon.png” },

“app”: {

“urls”: [

“http://netmediablog.com“

],

“launch”: {

“web_url”: “http://netmediablog.com“

}

}

}

Change he values of the shaded lines to whatever you want to and save the file as manifest.json.

Note: if you save it directly from notepad without first selecting the ‘All files’ on the ‘Save as type’ box, your file may be saved as manifest.json.txt and your app won’t work if it is on this format. So while saving the manifext.json file, choose the All Files option and save the file as manifest.json. Remember to also save this file in the same folder you earlier created.

Next will be to activate and install the Google Chrome app.

Testing my app on Google Chrome:

Launch your Google Chrome web browser, click on the Wrench icon and select Tools -> Extensions.

Next, check the ‘Developers mode’ and then click on the ‘Load Unpacked Extensions’ button.

Then select the folder where you stored your manifest. json and icon.png files and click ok. Then your Chrome app will be installed on your browser, ensure the enabled button is checked.

Open a new tab on your Google Chrome, if you are not already on the Apps click on the next button by the side of the browser to move to the Apps. You will notice from the image below that my NMB app has been added to my browser.

Hosting your app on Google web-store:

After verifying that our app will work on Google Chrome web browser from the steps above, we are now ready to host our app on Google Chrome web-store so others can download it as well and use on their own computers.

Create a ZIP archive of the folder that contains manifest.json and icon.png.

Visit Chrome Developers Dashboard and sign in with your Gmail account.

Click the ‘Add new item’ button in the dashboard to add your app. Accept the developer’s agreement.

Click choose file, select the ZIP file you created earlier and click Upload. Then the edit page for your app will load, a warning to verify the site you are trying to add its app will be displayed with a link to Google Webmaster Tools to verify the ownership of the site, before you can publish your app.

The next step involves filling out a form describing your app. You will be required to provide a detailed description of your app, add an icon of 128 x 128 px (here you can use same icon.png as before), then choose the best category that best describes your app in this case choose blog category and fill out any other things you feel is necessary for your app.

Note: Google web store charges a one-time $5 developer’s signup fee before you can upload your app to their store. After this payment you can now be able to publish your Chrome apps to Chrome web-store for others to download and use.

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