What about dodgy network performance? A website-in-a-zip will be a single network request, which might perform far better under some network conditions than many network requests.
On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 6:48 AM, Benjamin Francis <bfran...@mozilla.com> wrote: > Hi, > > It feels like a good time to bring up this topic again. > > One of the main themes in suggestions for Firefox OS 3.0 has been to make > the OS more "webby", moving away from packaged apps to something inherently > more web-like, and even turning the built-in Gaia apps into hosted apps. > > When we last spoke in this thread, the W3C "Manifest for Web Application" > specification [1] was at its first public working draft. That spec has > recently reached an important milestone by being declared feature complete > and is expected to transition to a Candidate Recommendation soon, already > having being implemented in Chrome. > > Service Workers seem to be moving along in Gecko [2], and have also been > one of the hot topics in Firefox OS 3.0 discussions, particularly in > relation to offline functionality. > > There have been several proposals of how to provide privileged hosted > apps, including work around hosted packages [3] and discussions around a > security model. > > There have been several prototypes demonstrated with hosted versions of > Gaia apps doing all sorts of interesting things, and proposed design > concepts around new ways of thinking about web apps, like Pinned Apps [4]. > > There are lots of separate teams working on things in this area so I > thought it might be useful to share what everyone is working on. How close > are we to being able to deprecate packaged apps? How are hosted privileged > apps coming along? What's the latest thinking on a security model? How are > Service Workers coming along? Where is the source code of some of the > prototypes people have been working on for hosted Gaia apps? What is still > missing? > > Please share! > > Ben > > 1. http://w3c.github.io/manifest/ > 2. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=903441 > 3. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1036275 > 4. https://wiki.mozilla.org/FirefoxOS/Pinned_Apps > > On 8 July 2013 at 22:31, Ben Francis <bfran...@mozilla.com> wrote: > >> Sorry for the typo in the subject line. It wasn't an attempt at a clever >> pun... >> >> Hello all, >> >> Apologies for the length of this email, I didn't have time to write a >> shorter one. >> >> A year ago Jonas sent out an email [1] outlining the requirements for a >> new >> breed of trusted web apps. He explained some of the challenges of >> fulfilling these requirements with hosted apps and set out the rationale >> for starting with a packaged app solution, with a view to exploring >> something more "webby" later. >> >> Now that we have shipped v1 of Firefox OS [2] with a packaged solution for >> trusted apps I would like to re-open this discussion and get your feedback >> on whether and how we might make trusted apps more web-like. >> >> In order to gain access to many of the new APIs we have created in Firefox >> OS, web content creators must change their entire distribution model and >> package the assets of their app into a zip file to be signed and served >> from one or more app stores. These assets do not have their own URIs on >> the >> Internet and are served over a local app:// protocol instead of HTTP. This >> is similar to how native apps on other mobile platforms work, and is also >> similar to the packaged apps used in Chrome & Chrome OS, as well as W3C >> widgets. However, it isn't much like how the web works. There is no one >> definitive version of the app at a single URI and the update process is >> very different. >> >> The System Applications Working Group [3] at the W3C have actually started >> some early drafts of specifications to standardise an app manifest/package >> format and the app:// URI scheme, based largely on the work done by >> Mozilla. Meanwhile at Google I/O, Google showed a version of the Chrome >> Web >> Store [4] where hosted apps are re-branded simply as "web sites", with the >> term "app" being limited to packaged apps using their own .crx packaging >> format. I have also heard suggestions that support for hosted apps may at >> some point be deprecated in Chrome altogether, in favour of supporting >> only >> packaged apps. The message coming from both Mozilla and Google right now >> is >> that all trusted apps must be packaged, hosted web apps can simply not be >> trusted with access to new privileged APIs. >> >> What's sad about this vision of the future is that many of the most >> interesting apps that get written using web technologies like HTML, CSS >> and >> JavaScript will not actually be part of the web. As Tim Berners-Lee >> recently put it in an interview with the BBC about native apps [5], when >> apps and their content don't have a URI on the Internet they are not part >> of the "discourse" of the web and are therefore non-web. This was a topic >> discussed at the "Meet the TAG" event hosted by Mozilla in London >> recently, >> with members of the W3C's Technical Architecture Group expressing >> disappointment in this trend. >> >> Are we happy with a packaged model for trusted apps going forward, or is >> now the time to embrace the challenge of making trusted apps genuinely >> part >> of the web? Perhaps we don't even need to restrict our thinking to the >> "app" and "app store" model and can explore ways of exposing more >> privileged APIs to all web content in a trusted way. >> >> If you're interested in the nitty gritty of this problem, I've tried to >> summarise Jonas' original email below. I hope he forgives me if I >> mis-represent him in any way, but you can read his original email in the >> archives [1]. >> >> ... >> >> In his email, Jonas proposed the following requirements for trusted apps: >> 1. The ability for a trusted party to review an app and indicate some >> level >> of trust in the app (or potentially in the app developer). >> 2. A mechanism for signing an app to verify that the app actually contains >> the content that was reviewed. >> 3. Use of a minimum CSP policy for all pages of an app to ensure only the >> reviewed code runs. >> 4. A separate data jar for local data to ensure a compromised web site can >> not write to the local data of an app to alter the way it behaves. >> 5. A separate origin for the resources of an app so that the app can not >> be >> tricked into running un-reviewed code from the same origin with escalated >> privileges. >> >> Jonas explained that the initial intention was to host trusted apps in the >> same way as non-trusted apps, to retrieve the signatures for reviewed >> files >> from an app store, but the files themselves directly from the app's own >> web >> server. >> >> He explained some problems with this approach: >> a) HTTPS must be used to ensure proxies don't modify the headers or body >> of >> HTTP responses, invalidating the signature. This would create an overhead >> for app developers. >> b) If multiple stores host signatures for the same app but review the app >> at different speeds, updating of the app resources and signatures must be >> synchronised between different stores and be limited to the speed of the >> slowest review. >> c) Signed resources have to be static because if a resource is dynamically >> generated by a server side script, the signature would also need to be >> dynamically generated, requiring a private key to be stored on the same >> server, which largely defeats the object of the signing system. >> >> It was argued that this would result in a system which, while hosted like >> the rest of the web, is not very "webby" and is the worst of both worlds. >> >> This led to the conclusion for us to package up trusted apps and to serve >> their resources locally over a new app:// protocol. >> >> >> My question is what might a hosted solution to this problem look like? >> >> Ben >> >> 1. >> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.webapps/hnCzm2RcX5o >> 2. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI >> 3. http://www.w3.org/2012/sysapps/ >> 4. https://twitter.com/bfrancis/status/335728228897550336/photo/1 >> 5. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b036zdhg/Click_06_07_2013/ >> _______________________________________________ >> dev-webapps mailing list >> dev-weba...@lists.mozilla.org >> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps >> > > > _______________________________________________ > dev-gaia mailing list > dev-g...@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia > >
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