Making Desktop Apps with App Studio

You can turn your NS Basic/App Studio apps into distributable Windows (and Mac!) desktop apps, by making them into Chrome Packaged Apps. Users will need to have Chrome installed on their systems. The apps can be sold or given away for free in the Chrome Web Store.

Here are the steps:

1. Create a file named manifest.json in your project folder. Use this as a template, changing it as needed. It should be saved as unicode (UTF-8), especially if you are using extended character sets.
   

{
  "name": "App Studio: jQuery Mobile Kitchen Sink",
  "version": "1.0.6",
  "description": "An app which demonstrates jQuery Mobile objects, written in NSB/App Studio.",
  "icons": { "16": "icon16.png",
             "48": "icon48.png",
            "128": "icon128.png" },
   "app": {"launch": {"local_path": "KitchenSink.html"}}
}

1. Add icons for 16x16, 48x48 and 128x128 to your folder, with the same names as in the manifest.
2. Select the files and folders that are part of your project and do right click "Send to... Compressed (zipped) folder". Do not include your .nsx file. Here is a typical selection:

Log into the Google Web Store Dashboard. This will work with an existing Google account. If you do not have one, you will need to sign up.

Select 'Add new item' and upload your zip file. The first time you do this, you will need to pay $5.00 "to verify your account and publish items". Once complete, 'Publish to test accounts'. It will ask you for some additional information to complete the submission. Don't worry - everything is well explained.

Detailed description Icons: 96x96 Screenshots: 1280x800 or 640x480 Promotional Images: 440x280, 920x680, 1400x560 Website information Category (Education, Games, Productivity, etc.) Pricing and payments Regions Language a few other settings You then have the option to publish to testers or make it public. For testers, send them the URL for the app. Public users can find the app in the Chrome Store. (Note that they have to use the Chrome browser.) It will look like this in either case:

Select 'Add to Chrome' and confirm:

It is then saved to Chrome homepage and can be launched there. The Chrome homepage has two views: "Most visited" and "Apps". Use the arrow on the right side of the screen to see the Apps if you are on the Most visited view.

In Windows, you can right click on the icon and Create Shortcut. This makes it look like a regular app:

To save to Mac, you need to use a third party utility as discussed here..

It would be great to have the window resize automatically in Chrome, but that does not work:

window.resizeTo(320,480) The bug is discussed in Google's Support forum.