Curated collections of Web apps

App stores usually provide some level of confidence to their users that:
* apps they get from them will be adapted to their devices (in terms of
UI, hardware support, ...)
* apps will not harm them 


(This second point has been debated a number of times, and the level of
confidence users should have is obviously dependent on the promises that
various apps stores are actually making.)

How can the Web provide a similar experience?

In terms of adaption of a given Web app to a given device, curation
remains obviously a possibility for Web apps store; but the promise of
the Web is also that a given Web app should work on as many devices as
possible. Obviously increasing interoperability (as Tobie is working on)
is a critical piece here, but it is not sufficient either: some Web apps
might rely on e.g. specific hardware, and no amount of testing will make
a device without an accelerometer report acceleration data.

Likewise, a Web developer could make the choice that a given Web app can
only be meaningfully used at a given screen resolution, or with a given
processing power, and thus want to advertise that limitation (not
necessarily imposing it).

I don't think that Web apps developers have currently any way to expose
this type of requirements (either for Web apps stores sake, search
engines sake, or even just browsers sake). The under-discussion manifest
format for Web app in sysapps as a "required_features" field that could
possibly address this:
http://sysapps.github.com/sysapps/proposals/RunTime-Security/Overview.html
but it's too early to tell how much of this problem space it will
address.

Does anyone feel we should put more efforts in this?


Regarding security guarantees, for Web-in-the-browser apps, the promise
of the Web is that loading a Web app in itself should keep very low the
risks of harm. And the technologies we're building are also meant to
lower as much as possible the risks that further consent from the user
will not expose her too much to harm.

For packaged Web apps (as define in the SysApps Working Group), the
model is completely different, and very similar to native apps;
installing an app is trusting it and granting it additional, potentially
dangerous, privileges. Clearly in this case, providing users with a
curated list of trustworthy apps is critical.

How much is new work is needed on this? From a first look, it sounds
like the hooks that SysApps will provide here should be sufficient for
building a curation system, but as always, I'm interested in hearing
alternative perspectives.

Dom

Received on Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:58:52 UTC