Re: [w3c/manifest] Way to detect if a web app is installed (Issue #1092)

I just wanted to highlight that there are two orthogonal states of a web application which are being discussed here:
1. Whether or not the web app has been installed
2. The display mode of the current browsing context

Installed web apps can use any display mode, currently including:
- fullscreen
- standalone
- minimal-ui
- browser (default)

For the former I support the term "installed" being used because that is the term used by native applications on most operating systems and if the intention is for web apps to treated as first class citizens then that should be reflected in the language used in CSS selectors and the DOM.

For the latter, the term used in the specification is "display mode", of which "standalone" is only one. Therefore I would suggest a key (whether a CSS selector or DOM property) of `display-mode`/`displayMode` with a string value which can be set to any of the valid display modes listed above.

Note that because [deep linking](https://w3c.github.io/manifest/#deep-links) is not widely implemented, it's possible for a URL within the navigation scope of an installed web app with a `standalone` (or `fullscreen` or `minimal-ui`) display mode to be navigated to in an ordinary browsing context (i.e. a browser tab using the default `browser` display mode) without the manifest being applied. This could result in a situation where the app is "Installed" with a display mode of "standalone", but the current display mode is "browser". It should be made clear what to expect in that common edge case.

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As an aside, may I politely suggest that the raw output of LLMs is not copy-pasted as a contribution in standards discussions? I wasted a lot of time reading the word spaghetti above in my email notifications before clicking through to the edited version on GitHub which discloses that it was generated by "AI" and not a human contributor.

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Received on Monday, 2 December 2024 16:25:01 UTC