Intent to Ship: Web Application Manifest

[Mounir Lamouri]

Contact: Mounir Lamouri <mlam...@chromium.org>

Spec: http://w3c.github.io/manifest/

Summary:
To quote the specification:
"This specification defines a JSON-based manifest, which provides
developers with a centralized place to put metadata associated with a
web application. This includes, but is not limited to, the web
application's name, links to icons, as well as the preferred URL to open
when the user launches the web application. The manifest also allows
developers to declare a default orientation for their web application,
as well as how the application is to be displayed by the user agent
(e.g. in fullscreen)."

Intent to implement:
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink-dev/qz2pd3MFPKg/dzUt2uZdnooJ

Is this feature supported on all five Blink platforms:
Yes and No. First, it's not really implemented in Blink but in Chromium.
Then, it's implemented for all platforms but only used on Android for
the "Add to homescreen" feature at the moment. Otherwise, all the code
about parsing the fetching the manifest and parsing the manifest (ie.
the parts covered by the specification) is implemented for all
platforms.

Demo link:
This is not adding any new API but only new data to be used by current
API and features. Chrome Android will use the Web Manifest for the "Add
to homescreen" feature at some point but unfortunately, there is no
public builds of this yet.

Compatibility Risk:
Microsoft expressed interest in the specification. Mozilla is has a
variation of the Web Manifest in Firefox OS (à la Chrome Apps Manifest).
The attributes that are being supported for now are non controversial
and simple enough to pose no compatibility risk (see specification).

OWP launch tracking bug:
http://crbug.com/366145

Link to entry on the feature dashboard:
http://www.chromestatus.com/features/6488656873259008

-- Mounir

[Jochen Eisinger]

I'm not sure what to do about this one. As you mentioned yourself, there hasn't much code landed yet, so it's unclear what you actually want to launch?

best

-jochen

[Mounir Lamouri]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2014, at 04:55, Jochen Eisinger wrote:
> I'm not sure what to do about this one. As you mentioned yourself, there
> hasn't much code landed yet, so it's unclear what you actually want to
> launch?

Sorry, if I wasn't very clear. Code has landed for this feature. It is
implemented and ready to "ship". What I commented on is that "shipping"
is a vague concept for this feature because the Manifest has to be used
by something else and per-se, "shipping" the Web Manifest doesn't mean
much.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can comment on future plans for Chrome
Android but as you can see in Chromium [1] [2], there is already code
using a few properties of the Manifest. Actually, all the properties
from the specification but 'icons' (which isn't yet supported by
Chromium).

[1]
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/chrome/browser/android/shortcut_helper.cc
[2]
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/chrome/android/java/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/ShortcutHelper.java

-- Mounir

[Jochen Eisinger]

ok, for that scope a PSA is good enough IMO.

also, if I read the code right, there's no command line flag that disables manifests or anything, so it is already launched on canary, right?

best

-jochen

[Mounir Lamouri]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2014, at 05:25, Jochen Eisinger wrote:
> ok, for that scope a PSA is good enough IMO.

There is this grey area about Web exposed features that are not exposed
via Blink. Given that features like that in the past (like
"brand-color") seem to have used Blink's Intent to Ship, I preferred to
follow the same path.

> also, if I read the code right, there's no command line flag that
> disables
> manifests or anything, so it is already launched on canary, right?

As far as I know, a feature is launched in Chrome Android when it hits
Beta. There is no other available channel. So for the moment, nothing
has shipped.

-- Mounir

[Jochen Eisinger]

I'd still argue that it's outside of the blink process, but lgtm to ship anyways

[Alex Russell]

Excited to see this ready to go out. Nice work, Mounir!

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to blink-dev+...@chromium.org.

[Dimitri Glazkov]

{ "dglazkov_status": "LGTM" }

[Addy Osmani]

Inordinately excited to see this land. Thanks for working on shipping it, Mounir.

As we currently don't include a sample (or demo) using the Web App Manifest anywhere, I've filed an issue for DevRel

to work on this: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/samples/issues/24

We'll keep an eye on when this is available in a public build before shipping anything, of course.