Intent to Continue Experimenting: Tabbed Web Apps

[Matt Giuca]

Contact emails

loub...@google.com, gle...@chromium.org, mgi...@chromium.org, bre...@chromium.org

Explainer

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

Specification

https://github.com/WICG/manifest-incubations/pull/95 (draft)

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.

Following a 6-milestone origin trial, we would like to continue experimenting as the feature team is not ready to commit to shipping, and gathered very little data from the initial experiment (as partners we have lined up have not yet started their experiment).

Per the Blink policy, we have made substantial progress in these five areas:

• Draft spec: https://github.com/WICG/manifest-incubations/pull/95
• TAG review: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/841 (closed with "unsatisfied"; I have sent a follow-up comment).
• Signals requests:
• WebKit: https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/195 (ignored)
• Mozilla: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/811 (closed as not interested in any of "these sorts of features")
• Outreach for feedback from spec community: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/tabbed-application-mode
• WPT tests: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/blob/master/appmanifest/display-override-member/display-override-member-media-feature-tabbed-manual.tentative.html

Blink component

Blink>AppManifest

TAG review

https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/841

TAG review status

Closed ("Unsatisfied")

Chromium Trial Name

WebAppTabStrip

Origin trial feedback summary

Only a small number of signups, most look like individuals wanting to experiment. A handful of small PWAs are using it. A few large sites signed up for the trial but do not appear to be using it.

That said, we think this is a useful feature and want to keep exploring possible customers of the API.

I was unable to see any qualitative feedback from registrants.

Origin Trial documentation link

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/capabilities/tabbed-application-mode

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Gecko: Defer (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/811)

WebKit: No signal (https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/195)

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?

N/A

Goals for experimentation

Roll out one major client and get developer and user feedback.

Ongoing technical constraints

Reuses browser tab strip code, adding further dependency between the browser tab strip and PWA windows.

Debuggability

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

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

No

The origin trial is available on ChromeOS only. Support for other desktop platforms is planned but low priority.

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

Partial (more coming)

Flag name on chrome://flags

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

Finch feature name

Non-finch justification

None

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Tracking bug

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

Launch bug

https://launch.corp.google.com/launch/4253814

Estimated milestones

OriginTrial desktop last	126
OriginTrial desktop first	118

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5128143454076928

Links to previous Intent discussions

Intent to prototype: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/IvfIkjvQYuY/m/cixwOyEeAAAJ

Intent to Experiment: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/m16m2TEq-NM/m/0Bc10numCgAJ

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status and edited by hand.

[Domenic Denicola]

For what milestones do you want to extend the experiment for?

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[Matt Giuca]

The original trial was from 118 to 123, inclusive.

We want to extend it so it continues running from 124 to 126, inclusive.

[Domenic Denicola]

LGTM to extend. The recent spec progress looks significant, and other areas are in good shape.

[Stefan Peter]

Hi, I think it would help to extend the Open Trial to Windows and Mac as well. We're really like that feature it fits perfectly our strategy and the behaviour of or App (having mutliple remote session to computers active in different tabs)

I have only minor problems with it, like that there are no favicons in the tabs or that the visible split between inactive tabs is not so well visible. But otherwise can't wait to have it as a non experimental feature. :)

[Alex Russell]

Great to hear there's support for the feature.

118-126 w/o breaking changes is pushing things. Is it practical to ship inside the 123-126 window? How close are we?

Best,

Alex

[Brett Wilson]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 8:29 AM Alex Russell <sligh...@chromium.org> wrote:

Great to hear there's support for the feature.

118-126 w/o breaking changes is pushing things. Is it practical to ship inside the 123-126 window? How close are we?\

Hi Alex,

Sorry for the delay, we've been trying to figure out the timing for this feature since there are a bunch of moving parts. We're going to try to get this into M126 (soon) and are working on the finishing touches. Look for communication in the coming weeks.

The main reason is that M126 is the ChromeOS Long-Term Support ("LTS") release used by many companies and schools. The date-based origin trials interact particularly poorly with the LTS releases, and because this feature is triggered by a manifest, it can't really be feature-detected for a fallback like you would normally do for a web trial. As a result, the options are (1) land in M126, (2) extend the origin trial until M126 LTS ends in 2025, or (3) inflict brokenness on LTS users.

To answer Stefan's questions:

• I think this would be a nice feature on all platforms as well, but the browser team has not shown interest outside of ChromeOS for now.
• The thinking behind the lack of favicons is that they would normally all be the same which is a bit weird.
• The active/inactive split should be inherited from the general browser tab strip behavior. We have promised not to diverge the presentation from the default tab strip to keep the maintenance burden on the team lower while re-using the browser tab strip code.

Brett

[Stefan Peter]

Hey Brett,

thanks for the feedback.

The use case for the favicon is, that we show different icons in the tab depending on the state of the tab content (kind of remote session, is there an error, waiting for an action etc). So it would be nice to have to be able to set an icon programmatically. 

Hopefully you decide to put the feature in the current state out of the experimental state soon. ;) It's easier than trying to explain to our customers how to set a chrome flag which has the name "experiemental" in it. *cough*

Stefan