Research & updates

[danimesq]

Here is one sad article anouncing Google's decision to deprecate Chrome Apps on Desktop. It has started from Chrome 52 in the year of 2016 (3 years later after the Chrome App Launcher launch).

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/apps redirects to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions.

Tried to search for "archive of Chrome Apps" which led me to chrome-extensions-archive; unfortunately their CRX archive site is closed but there's an archive file which can be replayed using this. There's also crx4chrome as alternative.

But I found the sucessor of /apps: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/collection/offline_enabled
Wonderfuly, it displays the same apps I saw in the old /apps page, and tried to test'em at electron-chrome.

Now, the part of downloading an old and compatible version of Google Chrome, when Chrome Apps and its Launcher were still at their glory. Searched for "Chrome Apps in desktop", which led me to deceptive (but still shows Chrome have support for most of their functionality such as opening windows) workarounds to bring back Chrome Apps in this result. Also, got an old page telling about them.

Then, searched for "Chrome App Launcher introduced" which led me to this old article from July 19th, 2013. So, I remembered the times in 2013 when I had fun discovering and installing apps in my launcher. My vague memories thought it was from 2016, but it was in 2016 when Google deprecated it.
Then, I searched for Chrome releases made in July 19th 2013, and found Chrome 30.0.1581.2 (Dev Channel).
I've started the journey to find a still alive Chrome 30 download by searching "Google Chrome 30 download" and have found this with a working download (hope its not a virus, haven't started testing this old environment to reproduce Chrome Apps, yet... ...wait! It came from an official Google domain, so... ...the biggest risk here is that its an up-to-date version rather than the desired version).

Now, the next step is finding the Google Chrome App Launcher. Its Softonic page didn't worked so, lets go to the next investigative quest. Tried to download from Archive.org through the launcher's official URL but all it did was redirecting to the /apps archives here and here; was surprised by this, but at least these archives are a good repository to copy Chrome Apps' IDs. Also, through this quest, has found this amazing gem! And this amazing extension will let me test installing Chrome Apps + this extension in electron-browser-shell so both it and electron-chrome-extensions' codebases will be benefited and their APIs/bindings/wrappers/handlings improved.
The ultimate step in this quest: searched "Google Chrome App Launcher download" and found one of infancy's site. Surprisingly, it didn't used Google's mirror but instead have hosted it themselves! Brazilians, audacious as always.
Have archived the Google Chrome App Launcher download here.

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Are all of these APIs available?