Re: HTML as application manifest format

Although I haven't actually studied this manifest proposal yet, Kornel's
overall analysis is very similar to mine.


On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Kornel Lesiński <kornel@geekhood.net>wrote:

> On 1 August 2013 12:44:19 Scott Wilson <scott.bradley.wilson@gmail.**com<scott.bradley.wilson@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
>> Or you could perhaps use XML. A bit like, er, this:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/
>>
>
> Hehe ;)
>
> I'm trying to address two things:
>
> 1. it's been shown ever and over again that developers on the wild web are
> really bad at working with strict syntax. HTML, XHTML that won't parse with
> right mime type, even RSS ended up as a soup.
>
> Strict manifest will inevitably face the same tension - either single
> misplaced  JSON comma or XML quote will break the app (and frustrate
> developers) or browsers and other clients will eventually give up again and
> accept almost-JSON soup that "works".
>
> HTML already got past that and deals with real-world mess. Let's not tempt
> JSON5 :)
>
> 2. Pave the cow paths. We already define web apps using meta tags,
> including bunch of Apple's tags for web apps ("added to home screen" kind).
>
> Meta is a well-understood existing mechanism that works. Everybody
> building web apps creates and references HTML pages with metatags all the
> time.
>
> Another very important aspect of it is that it lowers the learning curve a
> lot.
>
> You learn how to add one meta (that's the charset, should be mandatory for
> every dev). You then learn few more metas for favicons, google, viewport,
> mobile Safari. You copy&paste them. *Then* you learn how to create common
> file, and you do it based on whatever you have working already.
>
> Very easy and gradual.
>
> OTOH new format, with new names, new structure, no comments in JSON case,
> new and annoyingly pedantic syntax and separate file from day 1 is jumping
> on the deep end.
>
> It's trivial for us, experienced developers in this forum, to write JSON
> manifest, but beginners on the web start with  copy&paste and very little
> knowledge (and that's good! That's a low barrier to entry) so reusing their
> skills and letting them learn in small increments will help them a lot.
>
> Also look into the future - if Web Components with <link rel=import> take
> off you'll have lots of pages importing HTML of jQuery of components.
> HTML import might become natural and logical way of extending pages, and
> JSON may remain the odd exception.
>
> --
> regards, Kornel
>
>
>
>