Re: [manifest] screen sizes, Re: Review of Web Application Manifest Format and Management APIs

On 05/27/2012 12:53 PM, Scott Wilson wrote:
> On 27 May 2012, at 17:49, Anant Narayanan wrote:
>> On 05/27/2012 05:11 AM, Marcos Caceres wrote:
>>> Sure, but doesn't that lead to the original complaint that certain
>>> developers don't want their application to install at all for PR reasons?
>>
>> In combination with installs_allowed_from, some apps can choose to publish only on certain stores with which they have an agreement that users won't be allowed to install apps on devices they weren't designed for. Sure, it would be easy to bypass this since there is no UA enforcement, but this would be limited to a fairly small technical crowd.
>
> Two objections:
>
> - If its metadata intended for web app *stores* wouldn't it make more sense as part of the metadata for store submission, rather than an API for browser-type UAs? (Once more I'm CCing the web app stores CG...)

I think it is useful for UAs to have this information. Even if we don't 
make it "mandatory" for UAs to enforce the size restrictions in the 
spec, some might choose to.

> - If its easy to bypass, why bother with it?  (I once wrote a greasemonkey script that let the Chrome Store work on Firefox :)

A large majority of users will never bother bypassing the restriction, 
either due to lack of skill or time. Even if UAs did enforce it, it 
would be possible to bypass (in Firefox at-least, via an add-on). I 
don't anticipate that to be a huge issue, as long as we cover 90% or 
more users having a good experience for apps on any device.

-Anant

Received on Monday, 28 May 2012 07:33:26 UTC