We all know that Google Chrome has offered the ability to add shortcuts to web pages on the home screen of our Android device, but now it seems that Google blurs the line between websites and Android apps.
Google Blurs The Line Between Sites and Android Apps
On the computer, we are accustomed to spending much of the time accessing several different websites. While on our smartphone, the focus is more on applications, which has been changing over time because of web apps – web pages that mimic an application, either with an icon on your home screen, by sending notifications or use of GPS, for example, of your device.
Although a separation between web and application is very visible, Google wants to change this with tests in Chrome Canary for Android. In an update on the project Progressive Web Apps, which includes the more web apps for Android, Google announced interesting news that gives more “application face” to the websites.
Now, when a user adds a web app to the home screen, it will also appear in the application drawer. The behavior will also look similar, as shown in the below gif since you can drag the icon up and see information such as data usage and notifications, as well as a common app. Note that the load screen of these web apps are also the same as a native application has on the system.
Other minor adjustments were made to integrate web app better. If you tap and hold notifications from a web app, for example, you will have access to Android notification settings – not Chrome settings. Moreover, the web app can open a link that comes from another application, like the Twitter app opens when you click a link on Twitter.
According to the Android Police, anyone can test the tool, simply you have to download Chrome Canary from Google Play Store, then simply open it and the on the address bar simply type the following “chrome:// flags” then look for #enable-improved-a2hs and enable the option. Then just restart the application and open one of these Progressive Web Apps listed here.
