Re: WebApps functionality

["Jeremiah C. Foster" <jeremiah foster puri sm>]

Hello,

Before I reply in-line, just wanted to say thanks Michael for your
replies, they have been very helpful for understanding how web app
creation works in Epiphany.

On Wed, 2020-04-15 at 15:56 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 4:25 pm, Jeremiah C. Foster 
> <jeremiah foster puri sm> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2020-04-15 at 14:22 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> > >  Well you must have some appstream metadata, or the web app will
> > > not
> > >  appear in GNOME Software. But Epiphany itself never looks at the
> > >  appstream metadata. I would completely ignore that page of the
> > > spec
> > >  because none of that metadata will be used  for anything.
> >
> > At Purism we intend to use that Appstream metadata for a variety of
> > things, like determining if the app is suitable for a small screen,
> > etc.
>
> Hm. You could use that at the GNOME Software level, sure. 

Because we want to create a curated repository of apps that protect
your freedom, Appstream metadata and GNOME Software are the chosen
tools because they can address flatpaks, debs, apps, etc. But this is a
stricture that we've set on ourselves of course.

> But at the 
> Epiphany level, there's no way Epiphany could possibly look at 
> appstream metadata, because Epiphany allows creating web apps for 
> arbitrary websites. And, alas, arbitrary websites do not provide 
> appstream metadata for us to download. :P

Heh, fair point.

> > >  Ideally, before putting more effort into web apps, which are
> > > semi-
> > >  dead
> > >  due to the lack of flatpak support, we would figure out how to
> > > make
> > >  them work in flatpak.
> >
> > This is an interesting idea but seems to imply that a web app is
> > going
> > to need one of the flatpak'd runtimes which might be overkill for
> > a 
> > web
> > app?
>
> So there are two cases:
>
>  * Epiphany is installed as a system app. You can create and use web 
> apps.
>  * Epiphany is installed as a flatpak. You currently cannot create
> or 
> use web apps.
>
> flatpak would never be required for the first case.
>
> In the second case, yes, the web apps would absolutely require
> flatpak, 
> because you can't start Epiphany without flatpak. And Fedora and Red 
> Hat and GNOME are all betting very big that the second case is the 
> future. :) WebKit itself has to be part of the OS image, but
> Epiphany 
> wouldn't use it. When you install Epiphany, you'd get a flatpak and
> it 
> would use WebKit from the flatpak runtime. Probably that's already 
> working in Silverblue. And in this case, we currently have no web
> apps.

Right, this is where we are as well since we want the default browser
(Epiphany) to be sandboxed and flatpak is the current best practice.
There are other alternatives that might be useful for containment but
as you see the community seems quite invested in flatpak.

> Anyway, I think there's a lot of flexibility open for Purism to
> drive 
> the future direction of Epiphany web apps to match your vision, 
> depending on how much you want to contribute. 

I think we would like to contribute, I know there's an interest from
our management folks who'd like to see lots of apps on the device. Of
course we want to make sure that we're protecting privacy as much as
possible, but apps at scale is definitely interesting.

> The status quo is that 
> they're a niche feature with serious usability warts. (E.g. the need
> to 
> manually whitelist URLs in the web app preferences dialog to open
> them 
> inside the web app, which seems impossible to avoid, is extremely 
> confusing to users.)

The UX is challenging for users, that is true with a lot of new
technology however and hopefully we can smooth the rough edges through
use and contribution. :-)

Thanks again!

Jeremiah