

Progress report on cross-platform Open Web Apps - rnyman
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/progress-report-on-cross-platform-open-web-apps/

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daleharvey
I feel like its worth mentioning phonegap / cordova for a good start on the
ability to run open web apps on ios.

I love this functionality, was very surprised when I seen some open web apps I
had made install on mac with breeze a few months ago.

~~~
rnyman
The article has been updated to reflect the collaboration between Cordova and
Mozilla.

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comex
I know that this is just a demo, but it featured a very laggy map on Android,
an ugly menu bar and scrollbars on Windows, and perhaps more importantly, UIs
on desktop that looked like nothing but scaled up phone UIs. To the extent
that this is representative of the real thing - which, again, _could_ be 'not
very much' in the future - useful in a pinch, but not something I'd want to
use on a daily basis. (I don't think there is even currently an API to
populate the menu bar...)

~~~
fzzzy
You are correct that there is currently not an API to populate the menu bar.

Regarding app scaling, It's up to each app developer to do the required work
to have a responsive design, using existing web techniques.

~~~
deno
Firefox already supports native context menus[1][2][3] so it shouldn’t be that
difficult to extend this to top level menu bar.

Of course they should fix them first: 1) don’t show the browser options
otherwise it’s completely useless 2) (optionally) if you want the browser
options/extensions etc. use something like the clipboard/dnd api to set the
application specific mime type on right click and connect that to web intents.

[1] [http://davidwalsh.name/html5-context-
menu](http://davidwalsh.name/html5-context-menu)

[2] [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-
work/multipage/interactive-elements.html#context-menus)

[3] [http://caniuse.com/#search=menu](http://caniuse.com/#search=menu)

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pklingem
I'm really excited about this, I use Epiphany's web apps on Gnome every day,
but it is noticeably slower than Firefox. Is Linux supported or are there
plans to support Linux?

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fzzzy
Yes, Linux is already supported, but the desktop platforms are a little behind
Firefox OS and Android with some niche features. They will catch up in the
near future.

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Touche
Creating a native wrapper for Android apps seems like a smart idea. I don't
think the current method (not quite sure how it's implemented) works
particularly well. I have noticed some times they don't appear in the
multitasking bar and even if they do they often reload.

~~~
wfwalker
The current code on Android relies on putting shortcuts on the Android
homescreen, which has exactly the kind of shortcomings you mention. It was
pretty easy to implement, but now we have to go back and do it right.

~~~
Touche
Will this only work for apps installed from the Marketplace or will it also
work for self-hosted manifests?

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moron4hire
This is really exciting. This looks like a great way to get minimum
functionality for your project onto these given platforms. Yes, you'd probably
want to have a real, natively developed app at some point, but this is looking
good for prototypes.

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CmonDev
"iOS does not, at this time, include the option to install a Gecko-based web
browser" sounds fair, if you can't install one plug-in - Flash, you shouldn't
be able to install some other plug-in - Gecko.

~~~
ozten
Another way to look at this is that iOS is the least hacker friendly platform.

~~~
CmonDev
That is a fair point. But "Open Web Apps" focuses only on JS and HTML - that
is not very friendly as well.

~~~
Mikeb85
> But "Open Web Apps" focuses only on JS and HTML - that is not very friendly
> as well.

How so? You can compile pretty much anything to JS...

