Re: HTML as application manifest format

On 1 August 2013 12:44:19 Scott Wilson <scott.bradley.wilson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Or you could perhaps use XML. A bit like, er, this:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/

Hehe ;)

I'm trying to address two things:

1. it's been shown ever and over again that developers on the wild web are 
really bad at working with strict syntax. HTML, XHTML that won't parse with 
right mime type, even RSS ended up as a soup.

Strict manifest will inevitably face the same tension - either single 
misplaced  JSON comma or XML quote will break the app (and frustrate 
developers) or browsers and other clients will eventually give up again and 
accept almost-JSON soup that "works".

HTML already got past that and deals with real-world mess. Let's not tempt 
JSON5 :)

2. Pave the cow paths. We already define web apps using meta tags, 
including bunch of Apple's tags for web apps ("added to home screen" kind).

Meta is a well-understood existing mechanism that works. Everybody building 
web apps creates and references HTML pages with metatags all the time.

Another very important aspect of it is that it lowers the learning curve a lot.

You learn how to add one meta (that's the charset, should be mandatory for 
every dev). You then learn few more metas for favicons, google, viewport, 
mobile Safari. You copy&paste them. *Then* you learn how to create common 
file, and you do it based on whatever you have working already.

Very easy and gradual.

OTOH new format, with new names, new structure, no comments in JSON case, 
new and annoyingly pedantic syntax and separate file from day 1 is jumping 
on the deep end.

It's trivial for us, experienced developers in this forum, to write JSON 
manifest, but beginners on the web start with  copy&paste and very little 
knowledge (and that's good! That's a low barrier to entry) so reusing their 
skills and letting them learn in small increments will help them a lot.

Also look into the future - if Web Components with <link rel=import> take 
off you'll have lots of pages importing HTML of jQuery of components.
HTML import might become natural and logical way of extending pages, and 
JSON may remain the odd exception.

-- 
regards, Kornel

Received on Thursday, 1 August 2013 17:29:48 UTC