By José Dapena. Brief about implementation support of different web application stores in GNOME, with focus on Mozilla OpenWebApps standard and Chrome Web Store.

1. Web application stores in GNOME
José Dapena Paz <jdapena@igalia.com>

2. Web application stores in GNOME
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Step 1: integrate any web application in desktop
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Achieved with Epiphany “Save as Web Application”
Webs saved by user are shown as toplevel desktop
applications.
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Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

3. Web application stores in GNOME
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Step 2: web application stores. Do we need to support
them?
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GNOME is not a big target for developers.
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Web apps are.
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Apps stores are not the key, but the apps themselves.
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We need to support the technologies they use.
App stores just give a good visibility to the applications.
Users want apps fiting their specific needs:
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The more app platforms we support, the more likely we match user
needs.
Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

4. Web application stores in GNOME
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Experiment: Epiphany support for Chrome web Store and
Mozilla OpenWebApps
Available at
https://github.com/jdapena/epiphany/tree/webapp
Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

5. Web application stores in GNOME
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Results: Chrome Web Store
API is not public. Any change in their APIs would break
Chrome web store support.
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Some apps use specific Chrome APIs.
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Not many, but store API's do not report that information.
Final user perception: apps randomly fail. No real good
support. They'll drop Epiphany and adopt Chrome.
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What to do? We won't play a game of cat and mouse.
Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

6. Web application stores in GNOME
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Results: Mozilla marketplace
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Still not available. Expected for this year.
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API's discussion and specs are publicly available.
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Some of them already sent to W3C.
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What to do? Support it.
Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

7. Web application stores in GNOME
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Implementation challenges:
Web stores support is basically implementing some
javascript API's that map to Epiphany applications
support (applications list, permissions and UI for
install/uninstall).
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Experiment implementation based on WebKit-GTK+
JavaScriptCore API. We get access from GTK+ code to the
web javascript contexts.
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Epiphany is targetting WebKit2. No direct exposure of
web javascript contexts.
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Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

8. Web application stores in GNOME
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But the key that will make the difference is supporting
the new HTML5 features apps will use.
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New graphic features (CSS3, WebGL, …).
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New types of form inputs (phone, email, date/time, …).
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Video and audio streaming, RTC, use media streams as form inputs.
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Hardware and desktop integration (battery, geolocation, full screen,
device orientation, notifications, web intents, other sensors).
This work goes mainly on WebKit and WebKit-GTK+
Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

9. Web application stores in GNOME
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Goal: OpenWebApps stores support in Epiphany.
Target: Q2 2013.
Any help is warmly welcome.
But:
Apps store support RELY heavily on implementing HTML5 new
standards.
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Roadmap needs to be updated.
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Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com

10. Web application stores in GNOME
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Goal:
OpenWebApps stores support in Epiphany.
Target: Q2 2013.
Any help is warmly welcome.
But:
Apps store support RELY heavily on
implementing HTML5 new standards.
Roadmap needs to be updated.
Jose Dapena Paz | jdapena@igalia.com | www.igalia.com