Re: [w3c/manifest] Single-window mode option (#597)

A bit similar to how I never know whether a left-click is going to replace the current tab or open a new one (e.g., clicking a link in an email) so I often end up middle-clicking a lot anyway.

I think we'll want to give developers some guidelines that this should only be used if your app makes no sense in multiple instances, or if you are actually managing instances inside the one view, so either way there should be no data loss if you do this. Examples of where I think it makes sense:

- An IRC app with multiple chat panels inside a browser window. Using this API to suck a navigation into the single app window doesn't lose any data or state, it just opens a new chat panel.
- A music player that only wants a single window so they don't play music over the top of each other. If the user navigates to an album, can navigate to that album's track listing in the single window, while still playing the existing track in the background. User can close the new album track listing to go back to the previous track listing.
- A game where it doesn't make sense to be running multiple instances at the same time. In case you click a link to the game that's already running, we just switch to the current instance. Almost all "real" native games on desktop behave this way.

Ultimately, the user is able to override any of the above 3 cases if they really want to, but the developer has (rightly) decided that an average user shouldn't be exposed to multiple windows because it's more confusing than it is useful.

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Received on Thursday, 17 August 2017 07:31:13 UTC