ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Mitchell Reese <dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks, loving the latest Ubuntu RTM images on my Nexus 4, as well as 
the Nexus 7 vivid builds - exciting to see the direction things are 
taking, and have been android-free for sometime now. Couple questions re 
webapp integration -

IMO, webapps are one of the best parts of the new Ubuntu Touch images 
(yep, shows that I've published twenty or so of them... lol) - I love 
how the functionality has been incorporated into the rest of the system. 
Considering that many  (majority?) of the apps in the Google Play store 
are glorified web-apps anyway, this seems like a no-brainer. Couple 
ideas/questions about taking this further:

 * Are there any plans to further integrate this with the system?
     o i.e., When I choose a Youtube or Vimeo video from the scope, I'm
       directed to the Web-browser. What would be better would be to
       open that link within a webapp specific to that site. Is this
       functionality that could be included with the images? I'm
       imagining something like 'Default Applications' in the System
       settings, where an application (webapps included) could be
       marked as the default to handle certain links. This would be a
       much slicker experience.
 * Currently when webapps load they look like an ordinary web-page in
   the browser, minus the address bar, etc. This means they have an
   orange line at the top of the page to indicate how far the page has
   loaded, and nothing else. If there is no internet connection, a
   message comes up about 'Network Error'. I.e., it then becomes
   abundantly clear we've been looking at a webapp.
     o Is there any possibility of coding a different opening for the
       webapp, so that there is a slicker default transition when the
       page is loading?
     o Is there any possibility of having a different landing page for
       when there is no network connection, so it doesn't look like a
       webpage gone wrong?
 * There's still no functionality for webapps to continue their audio
   streams when the screen is off, or when switching focus to another
   app. I know Justin McPherson on the Gold Coast (here in Oz) was
   working on this, and as of a couple months ago seemed to have a
   working version of the webapp-container that got around this issue.
   No idea what's happened since, or why this hasn't been integrated in
   either the RTM or Vivid images. Does anyone know if this is planned
   in the future?
 * Until the above issue is sorted, can anyone tell me a command to set
   the screen not to sleep? (yep, I know I can do it through settings,
   but contemplating coding an app to work around this, temporarily.
   I.e., command to keep screen on (never sleeping), and command to set
   it back to how it was. Going through settings is 4 tapps too many
   /after/ the settings app is opened.)

All up, loving the webapp experience, and looking forward to its 
evolution! Three cheers for all the devs working to make this the best 
experience possible on any platform!

Mitchell