ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Olivier Tilloy <olivier.tilloy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 11:50 PM, Mitchell Reese
<dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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.

As Ted pointed out, this is already something that webapps can do,
provided they register themselves as able to handle certain links.


>  * 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?

The defaults are currently not overridable by individual webapps. They
could use a face-lift to be made more webapp-friendly though.

With the advent of offline capabilities in webapps (and their
implementation in chromium, which oxide is based on), it will
hopefully become a non-issue in the near future.


>  * 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?

It still is on the schedule, although it’s been delayed a bit. We hope
to land media-hub integration in oxide for audio streams in version
1.4, due in January.


>  * 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!

Cheers!

 Olivier