ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Peter Bittner <peter.bittner@xxxxxxx>]

Another thought of mine, because there's no discussion taking off
here: (I'm only receiving private emails on this post. Hmmm. Why?)

What about custom style sheets? That would be a handy feature that the
webapp container should support.

Some websites are responsive, but they have fonts or buttons that are
just too small for being used conveniently. I'd like to fix this with
a custom style sheet that I feed to the browser, that helps me to
override styles after the website has loaded. Another example, I'd
like to hide the tab bar visible at the top of the Gmail mobile app
(webapp provided by Canonical). As soon as I move the choices
available there (Google+, Gmail, Calendar, Web search, Drive, News,
etc.) into a bottom edge menu in the alternate container there should
be nothing and no-one stopping be from hiding the 50px high tab bar to
recover some precious screen real estate. If only I could!

The easier it is for developers to use those possibilities the more
they will be used. Custom style sheets defined or configured in a
webapp configuration file would be easy and awesome.

Any thoughts on this? Canonical? Anyone?

Peter


2015-09-01 19:44 GMT+02:00 Peter Bittner <peter.bittner@xxxxxxx>:
> Hi webapp developers,
>
> I see quite a few webapps on the Ubuntu Store that simply wrap a
> website, and, probably in fear of situations that require a back
> button, they show the address bar by default. Personally, I feel
> that's almost worse than providing a simple link to the website opened
> in the default web browser, because you have no real benefit of having
> a webapp. The main downside is precious screen real estate is wasted
> for an address bar you can't even manipulate.
>
> Other users seem to have similar feelings, that's why those kind of
> apps get unpleased (and unpleasant) review comments. In the end it's a
> problem for the whole platform: We'll get a bunch full of frustrating
> webapps that provide little to no benefit, and make Ubuntu Touch look
> like a lousy platform where you "first have to dig yourself through
> the mud of useless apps" (a future review in computer magazine may
> say).
>
> (Disclaimer) Let me note that webapps in the end are not useless per
> se, in my opinion. They can provide significant value over simply
> running the same mobile application in the web browser. And not having
> the address bar wasting precious screen real estate is just one major
> benefit.
>
> So, why doesn't Ubuntu Touch provide and promote something like the
> ogra webapp container [1] as the default for running webapps in order
> to help lazy webapp developers (myself included)? There should really
> be no need to activate an address bar when I can have the back and
> forward button to my rescue with a swipe up from the lower edge of the
> screen. (See the uApp Explorer webapp [3] for a demo.) If these
> options (Home, Back, Forward, Reload) were in the bottom edge menu by
> default, even better. The menu should be able to be extended or
> overridden by a simple addition of options in a webapp config file. No
> strict need to add QML code or so for simple shortcuts. (Webapps using
> this container currently do copy the QML code and change it, which is
> suboptimal in my opinion.)
>
> Note that there is also another alternate webapp container [2] demoed
> e.g. by the fantastic "Google Apps" webapp [4], which however I find a
> bit confusing with its dual-function bottom edge menu.
>
> Bottom line: There should be no more webapps with address bars in the
> Ubuntu Store. (Unless this provides a significant benefit for a
> specific application, of course. I wouldn't know of any such app at
> the moment, though.)
>
> [1] https://launchpad.net/alternate-webapp-container
> [2] https://launchpad.net/alternate-webapp-container-v2
> [3] https://uappexplorer.com/app/uappexplorer.bhdouglass
> [4] https://uappexplorer.com/app/googleapps.mattirn
>
> What's Canonical's opinion or plans on that?
>
> Peter