Building Resilient Systems on AWS: Learn how to design and implement a resilient, highly available, fault-tolerant infrastructure on AWS.

Install Chrome Store Web Apps with JavaScript

By David Walsh on February 17, 2013

Being able to install Firefox OS web apps from any domain, not just the platform app store, is a giant step forward in mobile app marketing and freedom. Firefox OS allows installing apps from any or all domains, and it just so happens that the Chrome Web Store allows JavaScript-triggered app installation as well.

JavaScript Install Code

The chrome.webstore.install method accepts three parameters, the install URL, the success callback, and the error callback:

/* Chrome installation */
var chromeInstallUrl = "path/to/chrome/app";
chrome.webstore.install(chromeInstallUrl,
function() {
	//  Success!
}, function(err) {
	//  Error :(
});

The code above triggers installation of the Chrome web app at the given location. The obvious difference from Firefox OS app installation is that callbacks are included in the initial call here, instead of adding adding onsuccess and onerror methods to a resulting install object.

Recent Features

By David WalshNovember 7, 2011
Create Spinning Rays with CSS3: Revisited
Last December I wrote a blog post titled Create Spinning Rays with CSS3 Animations & JavaScript where I explained how easy it was to create a spinning rays animation with a bit of CSS and JavaScript. The post became quite popular so I...
By David WalshApril 3, 2013
CSS @supports
Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS. What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix. Yuck. Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

By David WalshMarch 11, 2010
Create Twitter-Style Dropdowns Using MooTools
Twitter does some great stuff with JavaScript. What I really appreciate about what they do is that there aren't any epic JS functionalities -- they're all simple touches. One of those simple touches is the "Login" dropdown on their homepage. I've taken...
By David WalshMarch 28, 2011
Create a Spinning, Zooming Effect with CSS3
In case you weren't aware, CSS animations are awesome. They're smooth, less taxing than JavaScript, and are the future of node animation within browsers. Dojo's mobile solution, dojox.mobile, uses CSS animations instead of JavaScript to lighten the application's JavaScript footprint. One of my favorite effects...

Install Chrome Store Web Apps with JavaScript

JavaScript Install Code

Recent Features

Create Spinning Rays with CSS3: Revisited

CSS @supports

Incredible Demos

Create Twitter-Style Dropdowns Using MooTools

Create a Spinning, Zooming Effect with CSS3

Discussion