Sep 24, 2010 07:49 GMT  ·  By

Google has been relatively quiet about the Chrome Web Store after it announced it at this year's Google I/O developer conference, but don't let the silence fool you, the team has been working hard to get it ready for the slated fall launch.

While Google would only say that the store would be coming "later this year," all the signs point to an October launch.

If that is the case, the team better be putting the finishing touches. According to an update for developers, that's exactly what Google is doing.

"Starting today, you can sign up for a Google Checkout merchant account via your developer dashboard. If you’re planning to use Chrome Web Store Payments to charge for apps, you’ll need to complete this setup before you can accept payments," Qinming Fang, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.

"We also added the ability to see how your app will appear in the store. When you preview an uploaded app, you’ll see our new design of the app’s landing page. As before, your apps are only visible to you during the developer preview until the store launches later this year," he added.

The first update is crucial for the web store. Developers will be able to sell their applications in the Web Store, as well as their extensions and even themes. They'll have to use Google's own payments system Checkout for this.

If they already have a merchant account, they can just associate that one, otherwise they'll have to create a new one. The payments are only available for US developers for now, though it's unclear if this will be the case once the store launches.

Another change that shows that the store is getting ready for launch is the possibility to preview how the app's page will look like in the Web Store. The developers can only see the pages for their own apps.

There are a few new guidelines as well, to help app developers create the images and banners that will show up on the app page. These explain how to create icons, headers and promotional images for your apps.