Intent to Prototype: Declarative Link Capturing for PWAs

[Matt Giuca]

Contact emails

mgi...@chromium.org, alanc...@chromium.org, c...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/sw-launch/blob/master/declarative_link_capturing.md

Specification

None

Summary

New Web App Manifest members to control what happens when the user navigates to a page within scope of an installed web app. This feature introduces the "capture_links" member, an enumeration allowing the customization of link capturing behaviour, allowing sites to: - Automatically open a new PWA window when the user clicks a link to their app. - Have a "single window mode" like mobile apps.

Blink component

UI>Browser>WebAppInstalls

Motivation

After a user installs a PWA, currently the only way to open that PWA in its standalone window is to launch it directly from the system launcher, or use hard-to-discover Chrome menus to "pop out" web pages into the installed app. Site developers commonly request the ability for when the user clicks a link into their (already installed) app's scope, it automatically opens the app window. This mirrors the behaviour of apps on mobile which do this automatically. Site developers also frequently request the ability to, by default, focus an existing instance of the app rather than opening a new one. For example, a music player app doesn't make sense to open a second instance.

TAG review

None

TAG review status

Pending

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Very small, since any browser not implementing this will just fall back to the standard behaviour, which is to navigate to links in a browser tab. The design presents a forwards compatibility risk, which is that any new modes added after the initial release would not be supported on earlier browsers, forcing developers to break older browsers if they want to use newer modes (similar to what happened with "display"). We can work around this by accepting a fallback list.

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

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

No

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5734953453092864

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[yo...@yoav.ws]

On Monday, December 14, 2020 at 7:09:44 AM UTC+1 Matt Giuca wrote:

Contact emails

mgi...@chromium.org, alanc...@chromium.org, c...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://github.com/WICG/sw-launch/blob/master/declarative_link_capturing.md

Specification

None

Summary

New Web App Manifest members to control what happens when the user navigates to a page within scope of an installed web app. This feature introduces the "capture_links" member, an enumeration allowing the customization of link capturing behaviour, allowing sites to: - Automatically open a new PWA window when the user clicks a link to their app. - Have a "single window mode" like mobile apps.

Blink component

UI>Browser>WebAppInstalls

Motivation

After a user installs a PWA, currently the only way to open that PWA in its standalone window is to launch it directly from the system launcher, or use hard-to-discover Chrome menus to "pop out" web pages into the installed app. Site developers commonly request the ability for when the user clicks a link into their (already installed) app's scope, it automatically opens the app window. This mirrors the behaviour of apps on mobile which do this automatically. Site developers also frequently request the ability to, by default, focus an existing instance of the app rather than opening a new one. For example, a music player app doesn't make sense to open a second instance.

TAG review

None

Are you planning to file one?

[Matt Giuca]

I just filed a TAG Review:

https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/589

[Som Shahapurkar]

Hey Matt, has this moved beyond trial?

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[Matt Giuca]

Hi Som,

This API has evolved into a new design called "launch_handler" which is more general than link capturing (allowing us to specify launch logic for all kinds of app launches including share targets, file handlers, etc).

Intent: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/wNOClobsLrs/m/zo9KjKsoBwAJ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer

Explainer: https://github.com/WICG/sw-launch/blob/main/launch_handler.md

The Declarative Link Capturing trial is scheduled to end after Chrome 97, at which time the new API will be available and sites will need to adopt the new syntax to continue having this functionality. (It will be possible to have a site that supports the old and new syntax, with both the old and new origin trials, to support both Chrome 97 and 98 at the same time.)