Re: [manifest] Allow multiple application contexts per app (#294)

> For general browsing, can you think of any reason why one would want to open a browser from within an application without using an overlay browsing context?

Try using the Android Facebook app. By default it will open external links in a very basic overlay on top of the app rather than respect my choice and use my fully featured default browser. In my opinion, if I click on a hyperlink which doesn't fall within the scope of an installed app, it should open as a new tab in my browser, not stay inside the context of the app with some kind of stripped down overlay. Once I've left the scope of the app I'm back out on the open web and free to follow further hyperlinks, it doesn't make sense to keep me in the app.

These are largely UX decisions specific to a particular user agent so as long as the spec doesn't prevent an implementation from making these kinds of choices, I think that's fine. I think defining an application context as a browsing context to which a manifest has been applied is fine. I think specifying that an application context can only be created by launching an app would be overly restrictive (I don't think the spec currently says this). I think saying that an application context MUST always be navigated to the start_url when it is created may be too strong, the user agent might want to deep link into an app and therefore navigate a new application context to a URL other than the default start URL used when launching the app.

So perhaps the sentence "When an application context is created, the user agent MUST immediately navigate to the start URL with replacement enabled" is a little strong?

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https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/294#issuecomment-69733330