Re: [w3c/manifest] suggest in standard calling website->webapp process unified "add to home screen" or such in all browsers (not install) (Issue #1096)

@prime2358 thanks for continued interest in this.

I think you've got one thing totally right: the term "Web App[lication]" appears 125 times in the spec that is all about these things, but never actually defines the term. I have opened #1097 to action this. Later I could take a stab at a definition.

With regards to the "not calling it installation", I would reiterate, we deliberately choose that word, because adding a web app to your system should be thought of as installation by the user. Yes, there are fundamental differences, but those are not key differences in the user's mental model. As I see it, the two major differences between what this spec calls "installation" and the act of installing a native app (e.g. via an .MSI file on Windows or via the Play Store on Android) are:

1. Web app installation does not actually copy files into the user's system. This is true, but it is immaterial to the user. It is just an implementation detail.
2. Web app installation does not carry a heightened security risk versus simply using the website (whereas native app installation allows code to run with more security privileges). This is the more legitimate argument, as security is something users should be aware of. However, there is nothing intrinsic about the word "install" meaning "carries a heightened security risk".

What I think are far more important considerations, for the user's mental model, are the other similarities that web app installation has in common with native app installation:

* The presence on the launcher / home screen.
* The ability to be present in OS-integrated launch surfaces, such as being a file type association, share sheet target, etc.
* Depending on the OS, presence in the user's "apps", including potentially accountability for disk usage, etc.

Whether we can do this depends on the platform, but the ideal, and the direction we have been moving in for many years, is trying to make "installed web apps" behave more and more like their native app counterparts. For example, on Android now these apps are not just icons on your home screen. If you go into your "Apps" inside Settings, you can see your installed web apps and uninstall them from there. From the user's perspective, these are apps and they are installed. In the ideal long-term world, users will not really have to think of these as "web" at all, but just "apps" similar to the ones they got from an app store.

Thus, regardless of the implementation detail, "installed" is absolutely the correct term for these. Either way, as I said above, it is not relevant what the *spec* calls it, it matters how the UI explains it to the user, and that is not something we govern in the spec.

> It is very bad that the very things the standard describes is refused by a big player, and even chat-gpt says it is confusing since no installation happens

Not at all. Apple does not need to use the word "install", the spec does not require UIs to use that word or require an agreement at the UI level of what to call these things. I think that is healthy and allows browsers to experiment with different ways to message this concept. This is not the issue that you are making it out to be. (And I have no desire to make changes to the spec based on what ChatGPT says...)

> I see people fearing "installing" things from the web, they dont understand why should they do this, what they gain (but they know they fear viruses and stuff).

I think this is a legitimate concern, and gets to the core of the UI debates around this (do users avoid clicking "install" because they think it will add a virus, etc). As I said, it's something that we've discussed for years inside Google and I'm sure other vendors have too, which is why you see different UI treatments over time. I know on Chrome at various points there have been different strings including "Create Shortcut", "Install" and "Add to Home Screen". Again, this isn't something to solve at the spec level. Debating with the spec authors what to call it is pointless, because the users will never see the spec, and the browsers can message it however they want. (The fact that this concept is *not* enforced by the spec is a very good thing, because it means if you want to rename it, you don't have to convince the spec editors and all browser vendors to agree on the name change, it can be done in each individual browser.)

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