On Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 1:21 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>
> I still think that leaving out name and icons from a manifest about
> bookmarks is a big mistake. I just made my case here
>
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2014Feb/0039.html
I'll reply separately.
> Basically I think we need to make the manifest more self sufficient. I
> think that we're getting Ruby's postulate the wrong way around by
> making the file that describes the bookmark not contain all the data
> about the bookmark. Instead the two most important pieces about the
> bookmark, name and icons, will live in a completely separate HTML
> file, often with no way to find yourself from the manifest to that
> separate HTML file.
>
I still think that icons and name are outside the scope of V1 - but I've added
them to V2. The whole manifest and icon updating mechanism you describe in your
email to the TAG adds a bunch of complexity (yes, we need to deal with it
eventually as it's an extremely valid use case - but we can defer it to HTML at
this moment and for a few months... even if UAs don't do updating of icons and
name from HTML). I still hold that we should get the most critical and least
controversial functionality (display mode, default-orientation, and start-url)
standardized before we do the other stuff. It also gives a chance for UA's to
catch up and implement HTML's "application-name" and <link rel=icon> properly.
UAs are going to need to support those HTML features to work with apps that
don't make use of manifests. And apps the use manifests will work just fine
till we add proper support for name and icons into the manifest - all web apps
will need to include "application-name" and "link rel=icon" (as well as a bunch
of proprietary stuff!) to target todays and yesterdays UAs regardless. So,
IMHO, there is not much to be won by putting name and icons into V1 for
implementers or for developers at this moment.
I would go as far as to say that it's initially harmful to have name and icon
in V1 because it discourages UAs from fixing their support for application-name
and <link rel=icon>. Having the fallback behavior explicitly tested in V1 of
the manifest may help improve support for those features of HTML.
So, I'm not saying let's never do name and icon - I'm saying let just do the
easy stuff we have some agreement on first.
