On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Marcos Caceres <w...@marcosc.com> wrote:
> tl;dr: I strongly agree (and data below shows) that installable web apps > without offline capabilities are essentially useless. > > Things currently specified in the manifest are supposed to help make these > apps less useless (as I said in the original email, they by no means give > us "the dream" of installable web apps, just one little step closer) - even > if we had SW tomorrow, we would still need orientation, display mode, start > URL, etc. > > So yes, SW and manifest will converge... questions for us to decide on is > when? And if appcache can see us through this transitional period to having > SW support in browsers? I believe we can initially standardize a limited > set of functionality, while we continue to wait for SW to come into > fruition which could take another year or two. > SW will becoming to chrome ASAP. We're actively implementing. Jonas or Nikhil can probably provide more Mozilla context. My personal view is that isn't not a good user experience to offer the affordance if the resulting system can't be trusted. That is to say, if we plow on with V1 without a (required) offline story, I'm not sure what we've really won. Happy for this to go to LC, but wouldn't recommend that Chrome For Android implement. > On Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 1:37 AM, Alex Russell wrote: > > > I further think that the marginal utility in bookmarking something to > the homescreen (sorry, yes, I'm focusing on mobile first) is low if it > doesn't have a Service Worker / Appcache associated. > > Although I've not published this research yet, this is strongly backed by > evidence. Nearly all applications in the top 78,000 websites that opt. into > being standalone applications via "apple-mobile-web-app-capable" do not, in > fact, work as standalone applications. If anyone is interested to try this > for themselves, here is the raw dataset listing all the sites [1] - you > will need an iPhone to test them. The data set is from Oct. 2013, but > should still be relevant. Just pick some at random and "add to homescreen"; > it makes for depressing viewing. > > There are a few exceptions (listed below) - but those are the exceptions, > not the rule. > > It's strictly second-class-citizen territory to have "web bookmarks" > that routinely don't do anything meaningful when offline. > > Yes, but there are a number of factors that contribute to this: not just > offline (e.g., flexbox support is still fairly limited, dev tools still > suck, cross-browser is a nightmare, even how navigation works differs > across UAs!, limited orientation-locking support, etc.). > > However, to your point the data we have shows that about 50 sites in the > top 78K declare an appcache [2], while there are 1163 sites that declare > "apple-mobile-web-app-capable". So yeah, appcache, as we all know, is a bit > of a failure. Some of the sites that declare it actually have it commented > out... like they tried it and just gave up. > > Interestingly, only 10 sites in the dataset are both capable of running > standalone AND declare offline: > > 1. forecast.io > 2. timer-tab.com > 3. capitalone.com > 4. rachaelrayshow.com > 5. delicious.com > 6. forbesmiddleeast.com > 7. shopfato.com.br > 8. ptable.com > 9 authenticjobs.com > > 10. swedenabroad.com > > So, yeah... 10 / 1163 = 0.0085... or, :_(. > > Anyway... do you think it's ok for us to just standardize the limited > things in the manifest? We could have those at LC like in 2 weeks and then > spin up V2 to have convergence with SW. Better still, the SW spec can just > specify how it wants to work with manifests. > > [1] https://gist.github.com/marcoscaceres/7419589 > [2] https://gist.github.com/marcoscaceres/9018819 > -- > Marcos Caceres > > > >
