FDC3 for Web Browsers Discussion group - 20th April 2023

kriswest commented 1 year ago

Group overview

Group convened to discuss how to enable FDC3 use in a web browser, without the use of a browser extension (such as fdc3-desktop-agent or a container).

Issue: https://github.com/finos/FDC3/issues/896 Mailing list discussion: https://groups.google.com/a/finos.org/g/fdc3/c/jCvlLjokBLs

In a recent email on the FDC3 mailing list, @kriswest wrote:

... I also want to add that there is clearly significant interest in the community in enabling FDC3 use on the web. There is a strong use case in that it would enable better onboarding journeys with less drop-off (where you use an app on the web with others before adopting a desktop container or similar).

and:

But there are also additional challenges such as how to make the API available reliably without importing a proprietary module from a particular vendor into every app, how to deal with more than one implementation of API/Desktop Agent in the browser at once, how to do this reliably and securely within the browser sandbox etc.. Work needs to be done in the Standard to solve these issues and to make web browser use possible in a future FDC3 Standard version - which I believe is possible (and likely to involve using a vendor-agnostic FDC3 NPM module to detect and connect to API implementation(s)). However, we're going to need to do that work to enable the aforementioned API implementations to be compliant and if we fail to hold the line now on compliance with the current version of the FDC3 Standard, that may never happen.

Relevant issue tags

Current open issues that relate to the above concepts with the label:

Meeting Date

Thursday 20 April 2023 - 11am EST / 4pm BST

WebEx info

Meeting link: https://finos.webex.com/finos/j.php?MTID=mc297e9962d73ad18f6539745ce79abf9
Meeting number: 2552 173 3304

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Agenda

[x] Convene & roll call, review meeting notices (5mins)
[x] Review action items from previous meeting (15mins)
- 939
- [x] reconfirm the decision to load DA client libraries (after receiving details of what to load), rather than use standardized comms via postMessage for all App/Desktop Agent client -> DesktopAgent communication
Continue discussion of proposals for a library (standard) to provide access to a Desktop Agent API interface (35 mins)
- Proposals posted on #896
  - Detailed proposal with options: https://github.com/finos/FDC3/issues/896#issuecomment-1471736414
  - The proposal was reviewed up to the beginning of step 3 in the previous meeting.
- [ ] Discuss requirements/options for Step 3 (independent web apps)
- [ ] Discuss requirements/options for Step 4 (Micro-frontend containers (single DOM)
- [ ] Next steps + request for volunteers to work on proposal drafting
[ ] AOB & Adjourn (5mins)

Minutes

Unfortunately, this meeting failed to make progress through the agenda and was largely spent covering old ground, particularly revisiting the discussion of web containers (step 2), but without new insights. One participant questioned the entire premise of the discussion on multiple occasions, making it very hard to make progress.
The participants resolved to keep the minutes for this meeting light and to take steps to make the conversation easier to engage in. Several participants complained of the difficulty of understanding the current proposals, or the amount of time it takes to engage in/prepare for the discussion.
The consensus at the end of the meeting was that steps need to be taken to make it easier to engage in the discussion and hopefully keep future meetings on track, including:
- Producing a short of requirements and design goals for a solution, against which proposals can be evaluated.
- Code examples for use of a proposed installer library in applications.
- Examples of configuration files or requirements that might be needed.
- The use of polls to enable offline evaluation and voting on proposals.

Action Items

[ ] Produce a short lists of requirements and design goals to discuss at the next meeting.
[ ] Produce some small code examples to inform the discussion at the next meeting.