ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Alexandre Abreu <alexandre.abreu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 6:05 AM, Olivier Tilloy <
olivier.tilloy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.
>


To go further on this on the overall question of integration, we plan to
have a tighter
integration w/ the system in many areas making the experience as smooth as
possible.

(see below for example),


>
>
> >  * 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.
>

As Olivier pointed out, we are working on improving and expanding the webapp
experience, adding more customization points, and further blurring (as much
as it
can) the line between the environment and the web. We are considering some
customization along the line of what you suggested,

Another line of current work, is improving the support for webapps that wrap
websites that are advertised as "webapp-capable" and offer extra meta data
available for the environment to enhance the overall experience.