Intent to Ship: Web App Manifest: specify update eligibility, icon urls are Cache-Control: immutable

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

diby...@google.com, dmu...@google.com, fin...@google.com

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/manifest-incubations/blob/gh-pages/predictable-app-updating.md

Specification

https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/#updating

Summary

Specify an update eligibility algorithm in the manifest spec. This makes the update process more deterministic and predictable, giving the dev more control over whether (and when) updates should apply to existing installations, and allowing removal of the 'update check throttle' that user agents currently need to implement to avoid wasting network resources.

Blink component

Blink>AppManifest

Web Feature ID

manifest

Motivation

- Consistency: Provide a consistent way to detect when a manifest update should happen. - Preventing unnecessary user interruption: Users should not see an update dialog more than necessary to confirm security-sensitive changes. - User agent flexibility: It should be possible for users agents to use their judgement to block updates for known bad sites, allow known trusted apps to update without UX, or allow tiny visual changes to icons without requiring UX. - Developer control: Developers should have more control over when the update dialog may show to users. - Reduce network traffic: Unnecessary network traffic should be minimized.

Initial public proposal

https://www.w3.org/2022/09/13-webapps-minutes.html#t02

Search tags

pwa, update, manifest, manifest update, pwa update

TAG review

https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1076

TAG review status

Issues addressed

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

No information provided

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: Positive (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QDqllh8inOcIkTrblERm4HRKYh8Ce9Lu5S7WhOygs_0/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.b76fa6xoh2i9) Agreement on update approach with WebKit part of the discussion.

Web developers: Positive (https://www.w3.org/2022/09/13-webapps-minutes.html#t02) Discussions at TPAC 2022 and 2023 involved active discussion with developers, with a positive consensus.

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?

N/A, feature isn't launching on Android.

Debuggability

No information provided

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No

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

No

Flag name on about://flags

chrome://flags/#enable-web-app-predictable-app-updating

Finch feature name

DesktopPWAsPredictableAppUpdating

Rollout plan

Will ship enabled for all users

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/403253129

Launch bug

https://launch.corp.google.com/launch/4393456

Availability expectation

Feature is available only in Chrome.

Adoption expectation

This feature paves the way for PWA app migration [1], which is an ask by both first party and third party vendors as an essential feature for PWAs (crbug.com/380486617). [1] https://github.com/WICG/manifest-incubations/blob/gh-pages/pwa-migration-explainer.md

Non-OSS dependencies

Does the feature depend on any code or APIs outside the Chromium open source repository and its open-source dependencies to function?

N/A

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop	143
DevTrial on desktop	143

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).

N/A, anticipated spec changes will not be introducing interop risks. Changes are being made on Chrome's end to make PWAs more safer.

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5148463647686656?gate=5181792593903616

Links to previous Intent discussions

Intent to Prototype: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CA%2B4qT31vY-P2d2e%2Be5F101d_e%2B%3DOEE-%2BnbqxtqHSboeiJFqKOQ%40mail.gmail.com

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Mike Taylor]

Hi there,

Would you mind requesting the privacy, security, debuggability, etc bits in your chromestatus entry?

thx

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[Dibyajyoti Pal]

Done

[Alex Russell]

LGTM1 with a nit: did y'all ask Mozilla about their position or file a position request? Would be good form.

Best,

Alex

Done

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[Chris Harrelson]

LGTM2, conditioned on filing standards position requests for Mozilla and Webkit.

Done

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[Rick Byers]

LGTM3

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAOMQ%2Bw8y-WohJVL8M%2BWjmyQss3cjgud2gYC8y2WWSTbVmNtARQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dibyajyoti Pal]

I have requested [WebKit's position](https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/593) and [Mozilla's position](https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1330) on this, and updated the Chromestatus entry with the corresponding Github issues.

Thank you everyone for the LGTMs!