Re: Widgets - WARP, Widgets Updates and Digital Signatures

On 9/21/10 7:08 PM, Mike Hanson wrote:
> Hi - just wanted to note that Mozilla Labs people are here and listening.
>
> There are people in the labs group that are very interested in web
> application deployment into the main browser context. We are not
> particularly focused on "widgets" per se (as has been noted there are
> many runtimes for those, including Mozilla-platform-derived ones), but
> we have noted the trend of full-browser-window applications and are
> thinking about what it means.

Great.

> Claes' note of Sep 10 [1], summarized the questions that we're thinking
> about nicely.
>
> I would say that our current leaning is towards the HTML5 feature stack,
> with AppCache, local storage/indexedDB, and CORS/postMessage playing
> prominent roles. My current feeling is that widgets that are stored
> "forever" are better suited for a widget runtime than a general browser.

Agree.

> That suggests that packaging will play a smaller role on the browser UA
> since we will largely be working with manifests. API and network access
> permissioning at install time makes a lot of sense, as does integration
> with UX elements that help users manage a multi-application environment
> (pinned tabs, notifications, etc.). I have a personal interest in
> identity systems and would also like to see whether we can simplify
> application-identity management at this level.

Me too, I'm very interested in application-identity management. What is 
the appropriate forum to talk about this?

> Marcos - the Widget Landscape document [2] identifies the difference
> between Widget user agents and general browsers - but would you
> highlight any of the widget specs as solving as-yet-untackled problems
> in the general-browser application space?

No, the Widget specs don't handle this - and to be honest, the packaging 
solution (zip) might not be the right technology for the job as it does 
not stream well (unless you send it backwards, and do all sorts of hacky 
things). Our design goals, which are listed in the Requirements doc, 
focused around ease of use and reuse of existing technologies (read: 
focused around zip and xml... it was 2006, after all...:)).

But this is why we (Opera and others), in 2010, proposed to keep "Widget 
Embedding" as a deliverable for the Web Apps working group. We knew that 
we would need to deal with it eventually, but we didn't have any 
concrete technical proposals to make.



> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-device-apis/2010Sep/0049.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-land/
>
> -Michael
> --
> Michael Hanson, Mozilla Labs (@michaelrhanson)
>
>
> On Sep 16, 2010, at 5:30 PM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
>
>> Hi Nathan,
>>
>> On 9/16/10 7:38 PM, Nathan wrote:
>>> Marcos Caceres wrote:
>>>> On 9/16/10 6:10 PM, Nathan wrote:
>>>>> Marcos Caceres wrote:
>>>>>> As above. I thought that was what we (Web Apps WG - Widgets) have been
>>>>>> doing for the last 5 years?
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe I've missed part of the specifications - are you telling me
>>>>> that I
>>>>> can package up an HTML,CSS,JS based application as per the widgets
>>>>> specification, include a WARP, Digital Signature, set the view-mode to
>>>>> windowed and that this will run as is, in the main browser context of
>>>>> the main browser vendors (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, IE etc)?
>>>>
>>>> Ah! ok. I get it now. No, that won't work right now (actually, that's
>>>> how we run them in our development environment for testing purposes :)
>>>> ). But that is trivial and no one has really asked for that.
>>>
>>
> <snip>
>
>>
>>> Everything is currently pointing at an exponential increase in 100%
>>> client side applications, from all angles, we've got client side
>>> persistence, html5, canvas, ecmascript, gpu acceleration, a vast "web of
>>> data", cloud storage, positioning the web as the data tier, a plethora
>>> of standardized and supported APIs + media types - every element.
>>
>> Right. It's all looking pretty sweet... maybe we don't need them
>> widgets things after all...:)
>>
>>> The
>>> missing bit to tie it all together is for somebody to simply say "here's
>>> how you wrap it all up and deploy", and that work has been all but done
>>> under the banner of the widgets specifications.
>>
>> Opera supports W3C widgets: use that :) For Webkit and friends, they
>> are open source, maybe you can just hack the support and convince them
>> to make it a standard part of their platform. Other people have done
>> this (e.g., Widgeon runs on Mozilla's code, and there are lots of
>> WebKit implementations of widgets). You can also email Apple and
>> Mozilla and ask them to add support widgets if you think its
>> important. I'd be interested to hear what they say - I'm sure they
>> would be receptive to the idea.
>>
>
>

-- 
Marcos Caceres
Opera Software

Received on Wednesday, 22 September 2010 05:03:34 UTC