Intent to Prototype: Tabbed web apps

[Louise Brett]

Contact emails

loub...@google.com, alanc...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/manifest-incubations/blob/gh-pages/tabbed-mode-explainer.md

Specification

Summary

Allow web app windows to have a tab strip. This adds a new display mode "tabbed" and a new manifest field to allow customizations to the tab strip.

Blink component

Blink>AppManifest

Motivation

Currently PWAs in a standalone window can only have one page open at a time. Some apps expect users to have many pages open at once. Tabbed mode adds a tab strip to standalone web apps that allows multiple tabs to be open at once.

Initial public proposal

https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/737

TAG review

TAG review status

Pending

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: Positive (https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/737)

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

Debuggability

chrome://web-app-internals can be used for debugging, and the new manifest field could also be added to the DevTools Application pane.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No

Flag name

chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas-tab-strip

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Tracking bug

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=897314

Launch bug

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1307581

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5128143454076928

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Antonio Sartori]

Are there any mocks or screenshots of how the tabbed UI would look like?

Also, how would this look like on Android?

The explainer mentions "minimal security and privacy concerns with this proposal". Could you elaborate on them?

Thanks!

[Louise Brett]

There's mocks at go/tabbed-pwas-ux. 

We're only planning to do this on desktop for now so I'm not sure how it would work on Android or if that would be wanted.

The explainer mentions navigating out of scope - I can't think of any other concerns. Please let me know if I'm missing something!

Thanks!

[Kenneth Rohde Christiansen]

go/ links don't work outside of Google, do you have an external link?

Cheers
Kenneth

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Kenneth Rohde Christiansen
Web Platform Architect, Intel Corporation.
Phone +45 4294 9458 ﹆﹆﹆

[Louise Brett]

The mocks are internal only at this stage sorry. I've attached a screenshot of the tab strip with a pinned home tab - it looks the same as browser tabs.

[Susan Field]

Any update on this feature?

[Louise Brett]

We currently have an origin trial running on ChromeOS from M118-123. See the intent to experiment here: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/m16m2TEq-NM