Re: Widgets - WARP, Widgets Updates and Digital Signatures

Hi - just wanted to note that Mozilla Labs people are here and listening.  

There are people in the labs group that are very interested in web application deployment into the main browser context.  We are not particularly focused on "widgets" per se (as has been noted there are many runtimes for those, including Mozilla-platform-derived ones), but we have noted the trend of full-browser-window applications and are thinking about what it means.

Claes' note of Sep 10 [1], summarized the questions that we're thinking about nicely.

I would say that our current leaning is towards the HTML5 feature stack, with AppCache, local storage/indexedDB, and CORS/postMessage playing prominent roles.  My current feeling is that widgets that are stored "forever" are better suited for a widget runtime than a general browser.  That suggests that packaging will play a smaller role on the browser UA since we will largely be working with manifests.  API and network access permissioning at install time makes a lot of sense, as does integration with UX elements that help users manage a multi-application environment (pinned tabs, notifications, etc.).  I have a personal interest in identity systems and would also like to see whether we can simplify application-identity management at this level.

Marcos - the Widget Landscape document [2] identifies the difference between Widget user agents and general browsers - but would you highlight any of the widget specs as solving as-yet-untackled problems in the general-browser application space?

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-device-apis/2010Sep/0049.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-land/

-Michael
--
Michael Hanson, Mozilla Labs (@michaelrhanson)


On Sep 16, 2010, at 5:30 PM, Marcos Caceres wrote:

> Hi Nathan,
> 
> On 9/16/10 7:38 PM, Nathan wrote:
>> Marcos Caceres wrote:
>>> On 9/16/10 6:10 PM, Nathan wrote:
>>>> Marcos Caceres wrote:
>>>>> As above. I thought that was what we (Web Apps WG - Widgets) have been
>>>>> doing for the last 5 years?
>>>> 
>>>> Maybe I've missed part of the specifications - are you telling me that I
>>>> can package up an HTML,CSS,JS based application as per the widgets
>>>> specification, include a WARP, Digital Signature, set the view-mode to
>>>> windowed and that this will run as is, in the main browser context of
>>>> the main browser vendors (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, IE etc)?
>>> 
>>> Ah! ok. I get it now. No, that won't work right now (actually, that's
>>> how we run them in our development environment for testing purposes :)
>>> ). But that is trivial and no one has really asked for that.
>> 
> 
<snip>

> 
>> Everything is currently pointing at an exponential increase in 100%
>> client side applications, from all angles, we've got client side
>> persistence, html5, canvas, ecmascript, gpu acceleration, a vast "web of
>> data", cloud storage, positioning the web as the data tier, a plethora
>> of standardized and supported APIs + media types - every element.
> 
> Right. It's all looking pretty sweet... maybe we don't need them widgets things after all...:)
> 
>> The
>> missing bit to tie it all together is for somebody to simply say "here's
>> how you wrap it all up and deploy", and that work has been all but done
>> under the banner of the widgets specifications.
> 
> Opera supports W3C widgets: use that :) For Webkit and friends, they are open source, maybe you can just hack the support and convince them to make it a standard part of their platform. Other people have done this (e.g., Widgeon runs on Mozilla's code, and there are lots of WebKit implementations of widgets). You can also email Apple and Mozilla and ask them to add support widgets if you think its important. I'd be interested to hear what they say - I'm sure they would be receptive to the idea.
>