There’s good news today for Android app developers.
With Google’s release of Chrome 45 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android, the company also added “Chrome Custom Tabs. The new feature will soon be downloadable from Google Play.
Google has partnered with a few apps already, including Feedly, The Guardian, Medium, Player.fm, Skyscanner, Stack Overflow, Tumblr, and Twitter, which will support custom tabs “in the coming weeks.”
“Google first shared details about Chrome custom tabs when it unveiled Android Marshmallow at its I/O conference in May, but to be clear, the feature is available to all Android versions that can run Chrome 45 (Jelly Bean and up),” according to VentureBeat. “Instead of dumping the user into the browser or using a WebView, developers can use Chrome custom tabs to leverage all of the browser’s features while still maintaining the app’s design. Features like automatic sign-in, saved passwords, Tap to Search, and autofill are all available.”
Chrome’s security features, including multiprocess architecture and permissions model, are also available.
Best of all, Custom tabs use the same cookies as Chrome, meaning a better interface for consumers, who can stay signed into sites.
What was Google looking to resolve?
“Android app developers face a difficult tradeoff when it comes to showing web content in their Android app,” said the company in a news release on the new feature. “Opening links in the browser is familiar for users and easy to implement, but results in a heavy-weight transition between the app and the web. You can get more granular control by building a custom browsing experience on top of Android’s WebView, but at the cost of more technical complexity and an unfamiliar browsing experience for users.”
This new video from Google Chrome is a great introduction to the new feature. Check it out here.
