Crosswalk Project

Updated on Nov 15, 2023

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Written in HTML, CSS, JavaScript License BSD License		Platform Cross-platform
Initial release September 1, 2013; 3 years ago (2013-09-01) Stable release 20 / August 22, 2016; 5 months ago (2016-08-22) Preview release 22 / August 19, 2016; 5 months ago (2016-08-19)

The Crosswalk Project is an open source, web application runtime built with the latest releases of Chromium and Blink from Google. These are also used in Google Chrome. The project's focus is to provide the most up-to-date and innovative capabilities to web applications including experimental APIs and extendibility. A web application that bundles the Crosswalk Project runtime can install and run on different Android versions with consistent behaviour and feature parity (Android 4.0 and newer). The project was founded by Intel's Open Source Technology Center in September 2013. It is licensed under the BSD license.

Features and APIs

The primary features include:

Support for: Android*, iOS (limited), Linux* (currently deb pkgs available), Windows* 10 desktop, and Tizen*.

Web Audio, WebRTC, Intel® RealSense™ Technology, WebGL, Web Components, Web Workers, CSS Transforms, HTML Canvas 2D Context, Media Queries Level 3

Experimental APIs:

WebCL (graphics acceleration using the GPU) and SIMD (parallel data computation)

Device Capabilities

Presentation API (Miracast Second Screen)

Launch Screen

Raw Sockets

Compare with other phone web-based frameworks.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs for accessing device capabilities and sensors. The Crosswalk Project integrates well with Cordova to enable both the Cordova device APIs and the Crosswalk advanced Web Runtime. Starting with Apache Cordova Android 4.0 it is now possible to add a pluggable webview. This simplifies adding the Crosswalk Project webview into a Cordova project.

Tools integrating the Crosswalk Project

The Crosswalk Project is part of the following developer tools:

AppGyver—A UI framework for building hybrid mobile apps

Cocos2d-x -- A suite of open-source, cross-platform, game-development tools

Cordova/PhoneGap—A platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

famo.us—A JavaScript framework with an open source 3D layout engine integrated with a 3D physics animation engine that can render to DOM, Canvas, or WebGL

Intel XDK—A cross-platform development tool to create and deploy web and hybrid apps across multiple app stores and form factor devices.

ionic—An open source, front-end SDK for developing hybrid mobile apps with HTML5.

ManifoldJS—A tool to create hosted apps across platforms and devices and package your web experience as native apps across Android, iOS, and Windows.

Monaca—Cloud-powered tools and services to simplify PhoneGap/Cordova hybrid mobile app development.

Scirra's Construct 2 -- An HTML5 game creator for 2D games.

Sencha Web Application Manager—An application platform for deploying and managing web apps on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

telerik—An instantly available PhoneGap/Cordova-based development environment that enables cross-platform hybrid mobile apps to be created using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.

trigger.io—A hybrid app runtime for the artists and artisans of the web.

Standards

The Crosswalk Project provides a web application framework based on common standards: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and web APIs created and supported by W3C, WHATWG and the TC39.

License

The Crosswalk Project is open source and licensed as BSD. It is free for private and commercial use including source modification.

Versions

Each release cycle is about 6 weeks, incorporating the latest release of Chromium and Blink along with other features and APIs ready at the time. New releases are labeled "Canary" (potentially unstable and higher risk). After validation, a level of quality is reached and the version is labeled "Beta". With further testing it becomes "Stable".

References

Crosswalk Project Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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