Association between a web app and a window client should be better defined

WICG / web-app-launch

Web App Launch Handler

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Association between a web app and a window client should be better defined #69

Closed yoavweiss closed 1 year ago

yoavweiss commented 1 year ago

In a few places we check if a web app has an associated window client, but it's not 100% clear from reading the spec what that means. Defining e.g. a map the user agent maintains would help make that concept clearer.

alancutter commented 1 year ago

The precise mapping between web app and window client is unstable within Chromium's implementation. I think I'll just explicitly say in the spec that the mapping is up to the user agent but is probably at least window clients that were created via https://wicg.github.io/sw-launch/#dfn-prepare-a-new-web-app-launch-client.

yoavweiss commented 1 year ago

The precise mapping between web app and window client is unstable within Chromium's implementation.

What do you mean?

I think it'd be good to at least include a handwavy description of what that mapping is:

Including ones that were created as part of this spec sounds good, and should be easy to make precise
Should the map also include browsing contexts that were created after the user clicked on a PWA icon?
Should the map include browsing contexts in stand alone windows, but which were created through "traditional" navigation?
Should it include browsing contexts in tabs?

alancutter commented 1 year ago

Discussed with @mgiuca, decided upon letting the user agent pick from top-level browser contexts that have the manifest applied or are in scope of the web app.

mgiuca commented 1 year ago

Reading the spec, I think we need to be a bit more precise about the association. I think just using the language of the manifest spec is fine: a TLBC "having a manifest applied to it".

For example:

"If there is no top-level browsing context for the web app" should be "If there is no top-level browsing context with manifest applied".
"Let client be a top-level browsing context for the web app, the exact selection algorithm is decided by the user agent." should be "Let client be a top-level browsing context which has manifest applied to it. If there is more than one such context, the user agent MAY select any of them at its discretion."

(I think those two examples are all you need to update.)

alancutter commented 1 year ago

The launch_handler spec defines https://wicg.github.io/web-app-launch/#dfn-web-app-launch-client however this is redundant with the existing https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/#dfn-application-context definition. I should make use of this existing definition and drop the "client" one. This will remove the "associated with" ambiguity.

alancutter commented 1 year ago

I had originally wanted to keep the exact association between web apps and top-level browsing contexts up to the user agent should the UA wish to link capture web app launches into browser tabs however I think it can be up to the UA for browser tabs to have the in scope web app manifest applied to them if they want to or not.

alancutter commented 1 year ago

Resolved by removing the concept of "web app launch client" in favour of reusing "application context".