Google Chrome Adds Persistent Background Pages

(source: seocentro.com)While Google Chrome is a powerful browser in and of its own right, it’s also a way for Google to launch into the operating system market. The Chrome OS, set to launch later this year, is essentially just Chrome itself – using all the power, and all the downfalls, of browser-based applications. Before Chrome OS can succeed as a mainstream operating system, though, it must convince users that web-based applications can meet all their needs.

There have been plenty of efforts in that direction over recent months, with the most notable being the Chrome Web Store. While the Web Store didn’t take off with any sort of explosive fury, it has become far more popular over time, with top apps receiving tens of thousands of “installations.” To help push these applications to users and make the medium more appealing to developers, Google is now introducing persistent background pages.

A “background page” is any data that is loaded by or to an installed application. Some examples of this include a calendar notification in your browser, a message when a friend wants to start an instant messaging conversation, a notice when you get a new Facebook comment, or even just pre-loading data so an application will load more quickly. This data previously existing in Chrome only when a Chrome windows was open, will now “persist” even when the last window is closed.

This new feature is being introduced through a very simple mechanism: Chrome will continue running in the background even after your final window is closed, just so long as you have at least one “background page” that tells it to do so. Users will then be able to close out Chrome in the same way you would normally shut down a background application: through its link in the system tray or application dock.