iTWire

I wrote about Google's Chromebook earlier this year, and how it could be used by business and home users alike. For people who live in Google's cloud - Gmail, Google Drive, Google Apps and the like - it is an amazing lightweight device which requires no maintenance effort but yet provides a rich online experience.

However, one interesting anachronism about the Chromebook is that you could not actually develop apps for the Chromebook on a Chromebook itself. You could do many great and wonderful things - run your business, create a website, write a novel - but not make build new Chromebook apps.

Google has now set about to change this state of affairs, having released Google Chrome Dev Editor - presently in developer preview (ie beta) form only. This tool allows you create your own Chrome apps which can be deployed to Chromebooks, and in fact, to any Android device.

Let us pause momentarily to take the full ramification in; while previously Android and ChromeOS apps required a full, regular, computer. With ChromeDev you can build apps using simply a ChromeBook and deploy those very same apps to ChromeBooks and to Android phones and Android tablets.

Download Chrome Dev Editor from the Chrome Web store.

The app allows you to code through HTML, JavaScript and Dart - Google's JavaScript-like language, so there is no Java at this time, but you do get Git support.

Be sure to watch Google's 30 minute Google I/O video presentation on Chrome Dev Editor.