As the number of online applications grows choosing apps for your Chromebook may become really challenging. To help you with that we would like to present you with some of the best apps for Chromebooks which will unlock full potential of your Chromebook device.

Working with text is the most common thing done with computers. Of course, there is Google Docs, which is the first natural choice for Chromebooks. However, many of the power users miss great document editing features available in desktop apps. And among the online text editors, we would like to highlight OpenOffice Writer as one of the best online apps for working with text documents. Its functionality is quite impressive: it will allow you to work with simple and complex documents from your Google Drive or other cloud storage.  It comes with every feature you can expect from a modern text processor: use various fonts, styles, and text frames, create tables and diagrams, layout document, and all of that right in the browser. OpenOffice Writer supports many document formats including files created with Microsoft Office (.docx and .doc file extensions). Together with other applications from the OpenOffice family, it can become full-fledged office productivity solution for your Chrome device.

Apart from working with texts your Chromebook can do some fairly unexpected and sophisticated tasks.

For example, you can design entire house interior with Autodesk Homestyler online. It does not require any special skills – everyone can quickly create a plan of his house or apartment and fit it out with real furniture from real catalogs of the world’s best brands. You can do that in 2D and fast 3D mode. The application allows to draw inspiration from other people’s projects or create and share your own designs. Try on a new wallpaper in your living room, move furniture in your bedroom or visualize the house of your dream on your Chromebook with this great online application.

Even the stars can become closer with Stellarium, the online planetarium on your Chromebook. You can explore the sky and learn interesting astronomy data about more than 600,000 objects in our endless Universe. The app creates  admirably realistic night sky view, bright constellations, the Milky Way, dawns and sunsets from any point of the world.

As you can see, Chromebook is quite useful for work and education. It can bring you a lot of fun, too. If you are up to a five-minute break, check out these nice games for Chromebook.

The first game we want you to try is a charming online puzzle called Entanglement. Your goal is to make the longest path through hexagonal tiles. You can play different strategies in single-player mode or take part in the competition with other players. Relaxing soundtracks and beautiful backgrounds create a pleasant meditative atmosphere. Maybe we will find your name on the leaderboard some day!

Another choice to kill a spare minute is simple but absorbing puzzle game 2048. You get some tiles numbered 2, 4 on a 4×4 grid. Your goal is to make a tile with a value of 2048. You do that by pushing the tiles around the grid with the arrows on your keyboard. Tiles will slide, when two of the same value collide, they will merge into one with twice the value. This game is good for kids and adults, everyone can have fun playing it online for free.

As usually with online apps, you can try them with no download or installation. We hope this review was helpful. And let us know how you choose best online apps for your Chromebook.

Computers are now everywhere. Yet, how useful a computer is for a given purpose is often defined by an application employed for the task. Happy choice can bring tremendous productivity gains, unfortunate choice can instead slow things down.

Choosing applications for school is no easy task. Sheer breadth of uses for computers in school prompts for a whole range of applications. From basic math and language in elementary school to geography and geometry in middle school to advanced writing and science in high school – no single application can cover all the needs of a modern classroom. So, it makes all the sense to look for a suite of applications to make school computers an effective learning and teaching tool.

Another thing with computers in schools is that applications for students have to be installed on all of them. Also, more than 3.9 million Chromebooks and more than 2.7 million iPads were shipped to schools only in the last year. This adds complexity and costs related to managing schools’ IT infrastructure. This also raises the bar for educational applications even higher: they now have to be available across wide range of computing platforms.

With all that online applications accessible via the Web are a great match schools and students:

• online applications are instantly available without installation
• based on Web technology online applications are usually accessible from wide range of devices and computing platforms
• students can use the same set of applications can in the classroom and at home

Sure, online is great, but what about proven and trusted applications we use on our desktop computers? – you would ask. This is exactly where rollApp comes to help. It combines the best of both worlds by making desktop apps available online in one easy to use and manage package.

Check out our ever expanding collection of education and other apps. We can also help you move your custom applications to make them available on Chromebooks and tablets online.

A little while ago we created rollApp Wishlist – a place for you to suggest applications you would love to see on rollApp and vote for apps suggested by others. We’ve got some great suggestions so far and learned a few things about what kind of applications users want to use online.

Today we are ready to make first wishes come true Skype and Dwarf Fortress are now available online on rollApp.

Everybody knows Skype – great chat and voice and video calling application. Skype on rollApp does not support multimedia features (yet), but it allows to stay connected with your friends, participate in group chats and send and receive files in your Dropbox, Google Drive and other connected storage.

Drawf Fortress is another beast – very special fantasy game for those, who understand. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world. With rollApp you now can do that online from almost any device.

We continue working to make more wishes come true. Hope you will help us keep new ideas coming and let us know what you need the most.

Word processors like LibreOffice Writer and OpenOffice Writer unsurprisingly one of the most used applications on our platform. No wonder users of these apps were the one asking for ability to print their documents most vocally. And the day has come: you can now print your document form LibreOffice and OpenOffice applications on rollApp!

Printing works the way you would expect: you go to the File menu, click Print…, select rollApp Cloud Printer in the Print dialog and click OK to print the document.

When the application is done printing the document, it will be sent to your computer and another print dialog will appear. There you can double check settings of your printer and when you click Print it will start transferring your document to the paper.

This is still an experimental feature and may not be readily available in all the applications, but it will as update them. Stay tuned!

Printing is already available to our rollApp Premium users and everyone will get an extension of the trial till the end of this week to try it for themselves.

We continue to build our collection of educational apps. If you are looking for tools to help you get started with programing – we have great apps for learing programming, which you can use on any device online. Today we’ll have a closer look at BASIC-256 and KTurtle.

BASIC-256 is a great app which will help anyone to understand the basics of computer programming. BASIC-256 has a built-in graphics mode which lets you draw graphs in minutes and can also help with mathematics assignments. This would be especially interesting to middle and high-school students.

KTurtle is a great tool for the youngest programmers that makes learning to define algorithms as easy as possible. One of the best things about KTurtle is that it allows to translate programs into plain English (or another natural language for that matter). This is one of the many ways KTurtle tries to make learning to programming more simple. Other features to aid in learning programming include intuitive syntax highlighting, simple error messages, integrated canvas to make drawings on, integrated help function, slow-motion or step execution, and more.

We also have powerful tools for professional developers available via the rollApp platform on any device. Check them out too!

To stay up to date - follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.