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We're always on the hunt to find ways to connect more people to the great things happening on Wayne State's campus. If you have been following this blog you know these initiatives are often thought of and executed completely by us.

Chrome app

Not everyone has, or wants to have, the Today@Wayne (opens new window) website set as their homepage, and that is completely understandable. But we wanted to make sure it is as easy as possible for people to get to it. What better way than to have a Chrome app that is displayed every time the user opens a new tab (opens new window) or window? This way they can visit the daily newsletter at their leisure without having it load automatically every single time.

If you are a Google Chrome (opens new window) user you know the power of the extensions and apps. Both are lightweight and don't slow down the browser like Firefox.

Google Chrome has gotten a little bit of flack because a vast majority of their "apps" are simply redirects to websites. In our case we're currently doing just that. This approach isn't our long term goal but it will get us started.

Looking forward

Chrome has an amazing ability to render HTML5 and take advantage of every bit of the users processing power. You can see that clearly with the popular Angry Birds (opens new window) app. Over the next few weeks and months we will be expanding the functionality of our app to take advantage of the user's environment. Extending the website to use local storage and media queries to take full advantage of the users screen size and offline processing.

Download the Chrome app at: http://go.wayne.edu/today-chrome (opens new window)