TechCrunch
Chrome 31 Beta Adds Developer Features For Easier Web Payments, Full-Screen Mobile Web Apps & More
Google today launched the latest beta version of Chrome for desktop and mobile. While there aren’t all that many features in this release that users will immediately notice, there are quite a few new tools for developers in this version that will, over time, enhance the user experience, too.
On Android, for example, developers can now easily allow users to create application shortcuts on the Android home screen that launch the app in full-screen mode without any of the usual Chrome user interface around it. All they have to do to make this happen is to add a very basic meta tag to their websites (<meta name=”mobile-web-app-capable” content=”yes”>).
Also on Android – but also on Windows and Chrome OS – Chrome now makes it easier for developers to ask users for their stored payment information. The requestAutocomplete() feature, which powers this tool, will now be able to ask users for their existing payment information through a built-in browser interface. Once a developer has implemented this, this feature should make mobile payments quite a bit easier for users, especially given that entering credit card information is pretty error-prone on mobile (and online retailers will likely see lower abandonment rates, too).
Other new features in this version include Portable Native Client support in Chrome and ChromeOS, as well as support for URL handlers and directory access for apps. These last two features are simple, but add quite a bit of power to Chrome Apps. The URL handler allows developers to create links that automatically open a Chrome App to, for example, open a Chrome-based document editor. Directory access, as the name implies, gives Chrome apps access to user-approved folders on their local machine, which should make it easier to exchange files between Chrome Apps and native apps.
The Chrome team also added a number of other smaller features like alpha channels for WebM video and new 2D canvas methods to this update.
You can find a full list of all the new features in this release here.
This Week On The TC Europe Podcast: Google Is The Bad Guy, TechStars Invades London, Memoto Becomes Narrative
Welcome back to another episode of the most European tech podcast around. This week, we talk about Google’s tendency to be the bad guy in Europe. It has some issues with France’s CNIL around privacy — at least it would be fine if the company paid corporate taxes. This is the TechCrunch Europe Podcast, wherein we European writers discuss tech news, as well as what’s happening in our startup scene.
Also happening this week, it was TechStars first demo day in London! Three of us were there and picked our favorite startups. Finally, Darrell introduced us to Narrative, a lifelogging camera to keep track of everything. Would you buy this very expensive and creepy device?
Join Steve O’Hear, Natasha Lomas, Darrell Etherington, John Biggs, and Romain Dillet to hear what we think about those topics.
We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcast every Thursday.
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Intro music by Espanto.
Facebook Adds Content From Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr And Instagram On Its Home Lock Screen To Drive More Users
In September, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the progress of Facebook’s Home Android launcher at TC Disrupt, he mentioned that users would soon start to see content from Instagram and other third-party apps on the lock screen, in addition to Facebook posts. Today, it’s beginning to roll that out, first to Android beta testers, and starting with photos and posts from Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and its own photo network, Instagram. Facebook is not disclosing how many beta users there are who will be getting this, but a spokesperson adds that “We hope to bring this to everyone soon.”
The idea here is that by making Home more useful, it will attract more users. So far the app has had between 1 million and 5 million installs according to the app’s page on the Google Play store, and last month Zuckerberg admitted that Home was “rolling out slower” than Facebook had hoped.
For context, Home reached about 1 million downloads one month after it launched in April, amid waning interest from carriers like AT&T who had signed up early to sell HTC handsets with Home preloaded on them.
Zuckerberg and Facebook are remaining bullish on Home turning a corner, and adding in services like these from beyond Facebook’s own walled garden could be one way to achieve that. “I fully believe that [Facebook Home] is something that people will want over time,” Zuckerberg said last month.
Here’s how it works: you need to select the app you would like to add from the Home settings menu and log in with your credentials. From there you can effectively use the apps as if they were within Facebook itself — meaning you can like and view posts, and click on a “view on” link to go directly to the site.
Facebook’s also made a video of how the new feature works, which you can see here.
While this service is limited to four apps — two from Yahoo, one from Facebook and Pinterest — it’s likely that Facebook will be adding more apps to this over time. What’s interesting about this is that it makes the Home lockscreen much more into something of a default homepage for you, a more visual one than Facebook’s timeline in its app. It’s not the much-fabled Facebook phone, but it’s another step to Facebook-as-mobile-platform-provider, rather than just one more of the many apps that we use every day.
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