On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Marcos Caceres <w...@marcosc.com> wrote:
> Quick update: the Editors have closed off all "V1" bugs for [manifest] and > implementations in Blink and Gecko are underway. A thorough review of > [manifest] by interested parties would be greatly appreciated! You can file > bugs in our GitHub [bug tracker]. > Nice work! FYI I expect implementation in the Firefox OS browser to be tracked here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1003890 > > We now have the option to cherry-pick V2 features to either spin off into > separate specs or to add to the current document. You can view the V2 > features at [V2]. See also the [CSP-member], which is already in its own > spec. > > Devs and implementers, please let us know which V2 features should be > prioritized. > To me the biggest issues for v2 are: URL Scope to which the manifest applies https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/114 Specify how navigation works https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/142 ....which I think are all part of the same issue of "app scope". The specification describes a manifest whose properties can be used when bookmarking a web app and effect how that bookmark should be displayed by the user agent when it is launched (e.g. in a standalone window in landscape orientation with no navigation controls). But it does not specify the URL scope to which those properties apply. For example, what display mode the user agent should use when the browsing context is navigated away from the start_url, or away from the origin entirely to another unrelated web site. In other words, what is the scope of the app? All the specification has to say on this topic is "The user agent MAY override the default display mode for security reasons (e.g., the top-level browsing context is navigated to another origin)". But this doesn't include navigational reasons (e.g. getting stranded on another web site without a back button) or the case of multiple origins per app or multiple apps per origin. In Firefox OS the user can get stranded by following a hyperlink from an installed app to an off-origin web page with no back button and no indication that they have left the origin. Chrome for Android will show the new origin at the top of the screen if you navigate outside the origin in a "mobile-web-app-capable" homescreen bookmark, but it won't provide browser chrome. In Chrome OS if you open the Google search app as a window and click on a search result, it will navigate you to the result web page but not provide any browser chrome for the web site. I think a particular problem with having no defined scope for apps is when you want to hyperlink from one web app to another. A hyperlink with no specified target window will always open in the browsing context of the current app, regardless of whether the URL belongs to another app or web site. That means that the level of browser chrome you get when following a hyperlink (as well as the orientation of the page and the title and icon shown in the task switcher etc.) depends on where you navigated from rather than where you navigated to. I would like to see some way to define the scope to which an app manifest applies, so that the user agent knows which URLs belong to which apps and therefore what display properties to use for a given URL.
