Re: question about screen_size in Runtime and Security Model

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 2:24 AM, Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 1:31 PM, Lars Knudsen <larsgk@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > ( related proposal:
> >
> http://mounirlamouri.github.com/sysapps/proposals/RunTime-Security/Overview.html
> > )
> >
> > I think it's good that you are working on a spec to encapsulate what is
> > needed to make it somewhat easy to do generic app descriptors for web
> apps -
> > as opposed to fiddling with all kinds of Apple (or other) specific tags
> and
> > tricks to make webapps behave the same across platforms.  However, I am
> not
> > too fond of the spec proposal I found on github, where the screen_size
> > options seem limited to minimum width/height.
> >
> > What I need as an app developer, is the viewport meta tag "done right",
> > where I can say, e.g. "give me a screen of 1920 x 1080 (virtual) pixels"
> and
> > the platform would figure out how to best match it within the device
> > currently displaying it.  Of course, the actual pixel count could be made
> > available to the application, but to make it very simple for 99% cases,
> > where you just need a virtual fixed size game/app area - and be sure it's
> > fixed - why not just provide an easy way of doing so?  Currently, it
> seems
> > that - apart from preventing auto orientation change, iOS is the only
> > platform providing this (through viewport tricks, event stealing, etc.)
> and
> > IE is getting there.
>
> Wouldn't this result in black top/bottom or left/right edges on most
> screens? Isn't this fairly undesirable in most cases?
>

Please see my postscript that seemed to have been deleted from the reply:
"PS  Yes, I know there will be differences in aspect ratio - but this
*could* be fixed either by just enforcing one of the sizes (width or
height) or by simply having empty black space around."


> Also, I wonder if this wouldn't be better solved using CSS somehow.
> I.e. to be able to say that you want a window to be scaled to a
> certain aspect ratio. In particular, this seems like something that
> web page authors would want access to, which means that sticking this
> feature in an application manifest isn't a good solution.
>

Well - that is true.  However, none of the browser vendors seem to have
made their browsers ready
for simple apps and games with this little thing just yet.  Of course,
there might be a larger push for it
as the whole industry now seems to converge on HTML(5) for RealApps(TM).


>
> > Given that this spec could be the NextBigThing(TM) for webapps, please
> make
> > sure game and app developers are heard - not just platform implementors
> and
> > spec'ers ;)
>
> Absolutely! That's not just true for this spec, but for every spec
> developed at W3C. Unfortunately it's still something we're not great
> at. We're trying to get better at this.
>

Well - I will try to use the proposed manifest in my own project (where I
do a client in QML/WebView and a server
in Node.js - for this thing:
http://opensourcedays.org/2013/content/education-kit-built-webapps-raspberry-pi-and-arduino
 ).

I will have my own education/school related extensions - but can give some
more hands-on feedback to you guys when the
project progresses.




>
> / Jonas
>

thanks
- Lars