Originally posted on Chromium Blog

Posted by Darin Fisher, VP Engineering, Chrome

The last sessions of the Chrome Dev Summit 2015 are coming to a close, so it’s the perfect time to reflect on the event. We started our annual summit back in 2012, where we first introduced Chrome on Android. Today, there are more than 800 million monthly active users on Chrome for Android.

The greatest power of the Web is in its reach—not just across devices and operating systems, but in reaching users. Top mobile web properties are seeing 2.5 times the number of monthly unique visitors compared to the top mobile apps, and mobile web reach is growing at more than twice the rate of mobile app reach. This reach offers a unique opportunity to engage with more users.  

We believe this is a pivotal moment for the web platform, as early adopters of a set of key enabling technologies and tools are seeing success. During the keynote, we covered the evolution of the mobile platform and the shift towards “progressive web apps,” which are fast, robust, app-like experiences built using modern web capabilities. The web has come a long way, and building immersive apps with web technology on mobile no longer requires giving up properties of the web you’ve come to love. Flipkart’s new mobile web experience is a great example of a progressive web app that uses the new capabilities to provide a next-generation user experience.



In practice, progressive web apps have three main aspects that separate them from traditional websites: reliability, performance, and engagement.

Reliability

Every web app should load quickly, regardless of whether a user is connected to fast Wi-Fi, a 2G cell network, or no connection at all. We envision service workers as the ideal way for developers to build web apps that are resilient despite changing and unreliable networks. Weve released two libraries to help take the work out of writing your own service worker: sw-precache and sw-toolbox for your App Shell and dynamic content, respectively. Once your implementation is up and running, you can easily test it on different network connections using Chrome DevTools and WebPageTest. Service workers are already seeing great adoption by developers: there are currently 2.2 billion page loads a day using service workers, not counting its use in the New Tab page in Chrome.

Performance

The RAIL performance model helps you figure out what a user expects from each interaction with your site or app, breaking down performance into four key goals: 

• Responses (tap to response) should be less than 100ms 
• Animations (scrolling, gestures, and transitions) should run at 60 frames per second
• Idle time should be used to opportunistically schedule non-essential work in 50ms chunks
• Loading should be finished in under 1 second

In practice, weve found improving even just one area of RAIL performance can make a dramatic difference on the user experience. For example, a one second difference in loading time can have as much as an 11% impact on overall page views and a 16% impact on customer satisfaction.

Engagement

Traditionally, users have had a hard time re-engaging with sites on the web. Push notifications enable you to build experiences that users can engage with "outside of the tab"--they don’t need to have the browser open, or even be actively using your web app, in order to engage with your experience. Best of all, these notifications appear just like other app notifications. Currently we’re seeing over 350 million push notifications sent every day in Chrome, and it’s growing quickly. Beyond the Rack has found that users arriving to their site by push notifications browse 72% longer than average users and spend 26% more.

Tools for Success

Finally, Google is committed to making web developers successful. As our generalized library for building components on the web, Polymer is also deeply focused on helping developers achieve RAIL. Since its 1.0 release at Google I/O earlier this year, it has grown to be used on over 1 million web pages, including more than 300 projects within Google. Polymer 1.0 was 3 to 4 times faster than the previous 0.5 version, and the latest 1.2 release is even 20% faster than that. To get started with this modern way of thinking about web development, take a quick tour of Polymer, watch the Polymer Summit talks, check out the Polymer codelabs, or try the Polymer Starter Kit.

We already have great resources like Web Fundamentals that we continue to expand and improve.  We’re also committed to documenting each new feature we ship on the Mozilla Developer Network. In the past year alone, we’ve made 2,800 individual edits to MDN and created 212 new pages. To further our commitment to educating web developers, we’ve partnered with Udacity to offer a senior web nanodegree, an education credential focused on modern web technologies and techniques like service workers, Promises, HTTP/2 and more.

For all the details on Chrome Dev Summit 2015, you can watch full session videos, which we will continue to upload as they’re ready. Thanks for coming, thanks for watching, and most of all, thank you for developing for the web!

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Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Work

Today at Chrome Live, we showed how Chrome continues to make the way we work faster, simpler and more secure, while businesses like Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s shared how Chrome for Work is bringing innovation to their workplaces.

We also announced new Chrome products and features that make it simpler to bring Chrome to work, including:

• Chromebook integration with Box for more ways to bring your files to the cloud: Now, you can seamlessly access your Box documents from a Chromebook, just as you would access your local documents. This means that with your Chromebook, you’ll have access to even more applications, no matter where you are.

• Bringing face-to-face meetings to larger rooms: Last year, we launched Chromebox for meetings so you can have face-to-face conversations with colleagues in remote offices and still feel like you’re in the same room. Today, we announced a new version of Chromebox for meetings that powers meeting rooms fitting up to twenty people. The hardware in the bundle includes a Chromebox powered by Dell, Asus, and HP, a pan tilt zoom camera, and more; just bring your own display. From huddle rooms to large conference rooms, you can now affordably bring video meetings to more office spaces.

• Improvements to Chrome management for Chrome-dedicated devices: A few weeks ago, we announced over a dozen Chrome partners in the digital signage space. We’ve also improved ongoing reporting to monitor the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts from Chrome management if a screen goes down and can remotely reboot the device to get it back online without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

• Bringing Chrome management pricing flexibility to more places: We’re adding pricing flexibility to Chromebook management at a subscription fee of $50/year and announcing availability in seven new countries: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, India, UK and France.

If you weren’t able to attend the live session, you can still watch the event on demand. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

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Posted by Valdean Klump, Data Arts Team

Originally posted to the Google Chrome blog

In 2009, we launched Chrome Experiments to showcase the work of creative coders who pushed HTML5 and JavaScript to the limits in order to build beautiful, unique web experiences. At first, the site had only 19 experiments, but we hoped they would be a source of inspiration for programmers who made art with open web technologies. Since then, we’ve been humbled by the quantity and quality of new submissions. Today, we’ve reached a major milestone: 1,000 experiments.

To celebrate, we’ve created a special Experiment #1000 that visualizes every other experiment on the site. You can explore all 1,000 in a variety of ways, including a real-time code editor and a timeline with selectable tags. Click on the WebGL tag, for example, and you’ll see how that technology surged in popularity when it was added to Chrome in 2011.

A visualization of the first 1,000 Chrome Experiments

Along with Experiment #1000, we’ve redesigned ChromeExperiments.com using Polymer. It’s mobile-friendly, so no matter what kind of phone or tablet you have, or how you hold it, the site scales smoothly. If you’re on your phone, you can also filter the list to mobile-compatible experiments by selecting the Mobile tag.

The new ChromeExperiments.com

Looking back at the old experiments this month has been a joy. Highlights include Mr.doob’s classic Ball Pool (one of the original 19 experiments), the first WebGL experiment by Gregg Tavares (try 4,000 fish – this used to be very slow!), and Dinahmoe’s multiplayer audio toy Plink, which combines the Web Audio API with Node.js. At Google I/O in 2012, we released the first mobile experiments, including AlteredQualia’s Multitouch Toy and Dominic Szablewski’s X-Type. And each year afterward, new web technologies appeared, like getUserMedia and the Web Speech API. It’s been a wonderful journey.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the site, and most of all to the creators who have shared their work. We’re excited see what experiments you come up with next.

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Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Relations

Welcome to the Chrome Dev Summit livestream 2015! Today, Darin Fisher, VP of Chrome, has some exciting announcements and will speak about how the Chrome team is thinking about the future of the web. Tune in to the livestream below. We look forward to engaging in the conversation with you at #ChromeDevSummit.

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Posted by Casey Le, Product Marketing Manager, Chrome for Work

Chrome was a big bet when it was introduced six years ago and has since grown to provide a simpler, speedier and safer web for more than 750 million users around the world. Today, Chrome is an integrated hardware and software solution for work that meets the challenges of and innovates upon traditional platforms.

Join us online April 22nd at 10:00am PDT at Chrome Live, our first-ever online event, to hear from Googlers, technical experts and our customers about how Chrome is meeting the needs of a more mobile, social and cloud-oriented workplace. At Chrome Live, you’ll:

• Have a front-row seat to two keynotes from:

• Amit Singh, President of Google for Work, who’ll share how Chrome for Work is part of the transformational agenda of many businesses today. He’ll also be announcing a number of new products coming to the Chrome for Work family.

• Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management for Chrome for Work, who’ll discuss how devices have revolutionized the way we work. He’ll also uncover a few pathways of our top-secret roadmap and may have a few surprises in store.

• Learn how the web, meeting technology and digital displays are being reimagined with Chrome for Work product managers Saswat Panigrahi and Vidya Nagarajan

• See live deployment and management demos by Chrome team experts

• Hear from IT leaders at Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s about integrating devices with the cloud and enabling IT admins at top companies to streamline day-to-day operations

• Get a sneak peek at the team’s plans to continue innovating and addressing new needs in the market

To be a part of Chrome Live, all you need is a comfortable seat, an Internet connection and a computer, tablet or phone; pants are optional but recommended. You’ll be able to interact with Google experts and ask questions.

Register now to learn all this and more at the first Chrome Live event on Wednesday, April 22nd at 10:00am PDT. And even if you can’t attend on the scheduled dates, be sure to register to stay up to date on all things Chrome. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

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Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Relations

The Chrome Dev Summit is almost here! We’ll kick off live from Mountain View, California at 9:00AM PT this coming Tuesday, November 17th. To get the most out of the event, make sure to check out the speaker list and talk schedule on our site.

Can’t join us in person? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! You can tune into the summit live on developer.chrome.com/devsummit. We will stream the keynote and all sessions over the course of the event. If you want us to send you a reminder to tune into the livestream, sign up here. We’ll also be publishing all of the talks as videos on the Chrome Developers YouTube Channel.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in person or remotely on Tuesday. Don’t forget to join the social conversations at #ChromeDevSummit!

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Posted by Paul Kinlan, Chrome Developer Relations

Welcome to day two of the Chrome Dev Summit livestream 2015! Today, we’ll have a full day of sessions covering every aspect of performance on the web. Flipkart will also be joining us on stage later today to talk about their experience building a Progressive web app. Tune in to the livestream below. We look forward to engaging in the conversation with you at #ChromeDevSummit.

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