 "Google releases stable Chrome OS update, working on new IDE called Spark")
Google has released a stable version of Chrome OS for all enabled-devices barring a few Chromebooks like the Acer C7, the HP Chromebook 11 and the HP Pavilion Chromebook. The build, according to an official post, comes with a number of bug fixes, security updates and feature enhancements. Google says that all supported systems will be receiving the update over the next several days.
Some of the changes include being able to drag the Shelf, which is the app dock for the OS, from the bottom to either side of the screen. The launcher icon, app icons and the status tray have all been tweaked to improve touchability. The launcher icon has now been moved to the bottom left to keep it in a constant position. The user’s profile picture preference will now be synced if you use a Chrome OS avatar or Google+ profile picture.
Hard at work!
The team has said that the overall look and feel of the help experience has been redesigned to make it “visually rich and interactive.” The design for the Feedback page has also been updated and translate-related settings have been integrated into the languages option. One of the most notable additions to the update is initial support for USB-connected Braille displays.
The Chromium team has not stopped at that. Google is now working on a new project, codenamed Spark, which is a Chrome app-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The new app was first discovered by developer François Beaufort. According to his Google+ post, the new IDE project is built with Dart, the “new language for scalable web app engineering.” It contains a GUI widgets library powered by Polymer. The project is public on GitHub and “therefore interesting for anyone who wants to know how Dart and Polymer can be used to build the next generation of Chrome Apps.”
Chrome-packaged apps are traditionally written in HTML, JavaScript and CSS, but launch outside the browser, work offline by default and access certain APIs that are not available to Web apps. The new app, on the other hand, has been written with Dart, Google’s open-source Web programming language which aims to replace JavaScript. Polymer is Google’s library for the Internet and is built on top of Web components. You can have a look at both the IDE and the Widget user interface to see how the development is going.
It is currently not clear whether Google plans to actually support and regularly update this Chrome app. It is possible that the company may plan to simply use this as an example of what you can do with these technologies. There is no official word from Google about this project yet, though it is hoped that the Chrome app does find its way into the Google Play Store sometime soon.
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