Spark, the new Chrome-based development environment by Google
Google is building a Chrome-based development environment, called Spark. The IDE would function as a Chrome app on a Chromebook and would enable developers to build apps for Chrome faster and easier than they can currently.
Spark has a public GitHub repository where Google is building the app. Google engineers are using Dart, a new language for scalable web app engineering. Dart is a class-based and object oriented language that compiles to Javascript to build and run web apps — which is essentially what Chrome apps are.
It contains a graphical user interface library powered by Polymer, which includes a set of user interface components for building web applications. This is likely to be what Google is calling the “Spark Widget Library,” a set of GUI components that app developers can draw from as they build apps.
This shows significant progress towards a way to simply create Chrome apps. Chrome apps are a little bit more than web apps as developers have access to local Chrome APIs, meaning they can build desktop-class applications with little more effort than web applications, including resource-intensive apps.
Image by spierzchala.