Here on the Quickoffice blog, we like to speculate on hot industry topics, and one subject that caught our ears recently is Google’s ‘Native Client’. An ‘open source technology that allows you to build web applications’ in a compiled native code, TechCrunch describes it as ‘a potential missing link between native apps and web apps’. A hybrid model approach, the technology could become the next generation of web apps, allowing developers to build apps directly on a web browser, such as Chrome.

In a recent blog post, Google announced that they are baking ‘Native Client’ into Chrome, allowing developers to leverage their native code libraries for application development. If developers begin actively using Native Client, it could lead to a completely new generation of web apps, delivering high performance, mixed web apps. For Quickoffice, this would mean that our standard development processes would be altered, especially when working with Android smartphones and tablets, as the nature of the app itself would be different.

In looking at today’s popular web browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, IE 8 is still leading the market with over 30 percent of the overall market share. In second place is Google Chrome with about 11 percent of the market, and Internet Explorer 6 lands in third place with 10 percent. Although Internet Explorer is still the most popular, due in part to the fact that it has been around the longest, Google’s Chrome is making strong headway and will likely continue its momentum, as more and more developers continue to use Google’s Android operating system. Chrome’s popularity will also expand as developers utilize ‘Native Client’, creating a whole new method of app development.