Re: [manifest] Native API Permissions (#319)

> It seems that a "hosted app" is a thing that uses the web platform (HTML, CSS, JS) - but relies on, or has been extended with, proprietary APIs and/or a proprietary URI scheme. Anyway, let's keep on topic.

Sorry, I realise this is off topic but it's really interesting and I think a valuable part of the W3C web app manifest spec is about defining what a web app actually *is*. We can't really discuss granting permissions to something unless we know what that thing is :)

My take is that apps that use HTML/CSS/JavaScript but are packaged (and/or use a proprietary URI scheme) are by definition *not* web apps because they are not hosted at a URL on the web. They are just apps which happen to use some web technologies, but are not part of the World Wide Web. They are not linkable, crawlable or indexable.

Apps that are hosted on the web and use HTML/CSS/JavaScript are web apps. Web apps, like web sites, sometimes use proprietary extensions to the web which are not supported in all browsers.

> We still have the problem of the preconditions: before we can add permissions to manifests, there needs to be some W3C or WHATWG API that multiple vendors are willing to implement that would require permissions to be used in the manifest.

Agreed.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/319#issuecomment-77549922