On 27 May 2012, at 17:49, Anant Narayanan wrote:

> On 05/27/2012 05:11 AM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
>> On 27/05/2012 12:36, SULLIVAN, BRYAN L wrote:
>>> Re "At install time or when I am browsing apps, how does a server know
>>> my screen resolution? Or is this restriction imposed on by the user
>>> agent?": When browsing apps, the server can easily access the screen
>>> and window DOM attributes.
>> Right, but that requires some communication that is implicit in the
>> spec. I'm trying to figure out what data is leaving my device and going
>> to the server, and why (i.e., what is the expected life cycle model).
>> There is all sorts of things that are implied going on behind the scenes
>> that this spec eludes to (e.g., installation management/sync across
>> devices), and it's good to get a sense of how it all comes together. If
>> it's not clear in the spec, then I have a hard time seeing how multiple
>> user agents will be able behave in an interoperable manner.
> 
> There is no extra data leaving your device. When you visit a store it will 
> probe for your current device capabilities, and the store, at its discretion, 
> can decide whether or not to let the user install an app. There is no 
> enforcement by the User-Agent at install time.
> 
> Synchronization is an interesting problem that we haven't fully tackled 
> head-on yet. So we might need to add some UA enforcement at sync time as 
> opposed to install time.
> 
>>> When installing apps, the installer (browser, app manager, etc) can
>>> provide a warning to the user that the app is designed for use on
>>> larger screens, and may not work properly on this device.
>> Sure, but doesn't that lead to the original complaint that certain
>> developers don't want their application to install at all for PR reasons?
> 
> In combination with installs_allowed_from, some apps can choose to publish 
> only on certain stores with which they have an agreement that users won't be 
> allowed to install apps on devices they weren't designed for. Sure, it would 
> be easy to bypass this since there is no UA enforcement, but this would be 
> limited to a fairly small technical crowd.

Two objections:

- If its metadata intended for web app *stores* wouldn't it make more sense as 
part of the metadata for store submission, rather than an API for browser-type 
UAs? (Once more I'm CCing the web app stores CG...)

- If its easy to bypass, why bother with it?  (I once wrote a greasemonkey 
script that let the Chrome Store work on Firefox :)


> 
> -Anant
> 


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