On 16 July 2015 at 01:44, Robert O'Callahan <rob...@ocallahan.org> wrote:
> As long as platforms exist with homescreens and other inventories of > "installed apps", of which the browser is one, it seems worthwhile to me to > support adding Web apps to those inventories so they're peers of native > apps instead of having to go through a level of indirection by launching a > browser, making them second-class. > > We can argue that such platforms shouldn't exist, but we also have to work > with the reality that they do. Exactly. We can no longer talk about "merging the web and native" as some potential future thing that may or may not happen. It is already happening: 1. Android's Chrome Custom Tabs will keep users in native apps when following external hyperlinks https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs 2. Android's App Links will let native apps register to handle a particular web URL scope and remove the choice of the user to choose to open in the browser instead https://developer.android.com/preview/features/app-linking.html 3. App install banners in Chrome may prompt users to install a web app or a native app, and the user may not even be able to tell the difference https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing-engagement-with-app-install-banners-in-chrome-for-android?hl=en http://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/#related_applications-member 4. Android's App Indexing will surface content from inside Android apps in Google results https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/ 5. iOS's "Universal Links", "Smart App Banners" and new search API will do much of the same on iOS https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=509 This all points towards a future where the web and proprietary app platforms are so intertwined that users may not even know the difference. The question is how we respond to that. On Firefox OS we have the freedom to define the entire experience, but on the other operating systems we touch we need to accept the reality of the environment that we find ourselves in. My personal conclusion is that we should react to all of the above by pushing back in the other direction by: 1. Helping users discover a web app before they discover its native equivalent, whilst browsing and searching the web 2. Making web content a first class citizen on every OS Firefox touches, with a standalone display mode for Firefox 3. Promoting re-engagement with web content through icons in launchers, offline and push notifications 4. Guiding users to the best of the web through a crowd-sourced, community curated guide The web has some unique advantages over other platforms, but those advantages are being eroded. It's up to us to prove that the web can still compete. Ben _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
