Crosswalk Project
Crosswalk Project is an open-source web app 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 apps including experimental APIs and extensibility. A web app that bundles the Crosswalk Project runtime can install and run on different Android versions with consistent behavior and feature parity (Android 4.0 and newer).
 | |
| Initial release | September 1, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 23[1]
/ December 20, 2016 |
| Preview release | 24
|
| Written in | HTML, CSS, JavaScript |
| Platform | Android, iOS, Linux desktop (Debian), Windows 10 desktop, Tizen |
| License | BSD License |
| Website | www |
The project was founded by Intel's Open Source Technology Center in September 2013. It is licensed under the BSD license. As of February 2017 Intel ceased to actively support the project, saying:
Crosswalk 23 is our last stable release. After that we will no longer fix specific bugs but will leave the source code and binaries available for Crosswalk users to continue building applications. We welcome help from the Crosswalk community and would not discourage anybody willing to maintain the project.
Features
The primary features include:
- Support for: Android, iOS (limited), Linux (currently deb pkgs available), Windows 10 and Tizen.
- Web Audio, WebRTC, Intel RealSense, WebGL, Web Components, Web workers, CSS transforms, HTML canvas 2D context, Media Queries level 3
- Experimental APIs:
Compare with other phone web-based frameworks.
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs for accessing device capabilities and sensors. 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[2] it is now possible to add a pluggable webview. This simplifies adding the Crosswalk Project webview into a Cordova project.
Tools integrating Crosswalk Project
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 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
Crosswalk Project provides a web application framework based on common standards: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and web APIs created and supported by W3C, WHATWG and TC39.
License
Crosswalk Project is open-source and licensed under BSD license.
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".