Re: please come with some term other than "browse-by Web"

I'm not sure I quite understand the motivation behind your email.  Is
there something wrong with the term?  As far as I know, it's a new
term, but the need for the term is also new.  The intent is to
distinguish between the usual browser execution model (and its
security model and social customs) and the execution model we're
discussing in this working group.

The idea is that the "browse-by" web consists of content that's safe
for users to casually visit in their browsers without worrying too
much about the security consequences.  It's meant to invoke
connotations of "just browsin' by", the way one might take a casual
stroll in a mall and browse through the shops.

By contrast, many of the APIs we plan to discuss in this group are not
safe in the usual browser execution model, and users who are just
causally "browsing by" ought not to be ambushed by content seeking to
use these APIs.   Instead, the idea is to have surrounding social
customs more like what's current used by native apps on mobile phones,
where there's some sort of store that contains reputation information
and an explicit install / uninstall process.

The main difference in "feel" between these two cases is that the
latter doesn't feel like "browsing".  It's of course all part of the
Web, and the content itself might well have HTTP URLs and be hosted on
servers, for example, but users don't arrive at the content by
browsing.  Hence the term "browse by" to refer to the existing model.

Adam


On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 3:03 AM, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> wrote:
> The charter for the proposed System Applications Working Group uses the
> term "browse-by Web" without defining it, and that term has also popped up
> in at least one thread on this list so far.
>
> That term doesn't seem to be in common use anywhere else, so I'm assuming
> it's something that was coined recently in an attempt to distinguish the
> scope of the proposed new group from the scope of the WebApps WG and DAP WG.
>
> I'd like to suggest it not be used and instead replaced by a some other
> term that's more clear, or failing that, at least defined explicitly in the
> charter. (I'm not just trying to bikeshed; the term seems fundamental to
> the scope of the work and should reflect that scope as clearly as possible,
> instead of being some newly minted opaque thing.)
>
> Looking at the other language in the charter, I see:
>
>  http://www.w3.org/2012/05/sysapps-wg-charter.html
>
>  This working group differs from both the Web Applications Working Group
>  and the Device APIs Working Group in that those working groups are
>  focused on defining APIs that are safe to run in a browser environment.
>
>  The working group will focus on those operating system interactions that
>  cannot necessarily be exposed safely to Web applications executing in the
>  traditional browser security model.
>
> So it seems like instead of using "browse-by Web" to say what the proposed
> APIs are not, it would make a lot more sense to define the scope of the
> work as whatever it actually is; e.g., "browser-unsafe APIs" or
> "Web-application-unsafe APIs" or "non-SOP APIs".
>
>  --Mike
>
> --
> Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike
>

Received on Tuesday, 29 May 2012 17:34:49 UTC