Starting the journey to standardizing Window Controls Overlay

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Diego Gonzalez

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May 17, 2021, 12:51:26 PM5/17/21
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Hola,

 

I am Diego, the PM working on the Window Controls Overlay feature. You can find the explainer here: https://github.com/WICG/window-controls-overlay/blob/main/explainer.md

 

In a nutshell, these set of technologies allow a developer to customize the title bar of an installed web application. It consists of several parts:

 

  • (JS) New object on the window.navigator.windowControlsOverlay.
  • (CSS) New Environmental variables: (titlebar-area-{x/y/width/height}). [CSS spec?]
  • (CSS) standardisation of -webkit-app-region:drag and -webkit-app-region: no-drag. [CSS spec?]
  • (Manifest) addition of “display-override” member [manifest spec?]

 

We are looking to standardize these, and I’d appreciate help in identifying who would be the right person to guide me to define which spec (and part of that spec) is best to add these items to.

 

Regards,

 

Diego González-Zúñiga

PM, Microsoft Edge

 

 

Kenneth Rohde Christiansen

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May 17, 2021, 1:02:55 PM5/17/21
to Diego Gonzalez, blink-dev
display_override is already specced here: https://wicg.github.io/manifest-incubations/#display_override-member

But I don't know the plans for adding it to the main spec

Kenneth

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Matt Giuca

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May 21, 2021, 2:42:45 AM5/21/21
to Kenneth Rohde Christiansen, Diego Gonzalez, blink-dev
Hi Diego,

[Context: I've worked a bit with Amanda on WCO and I'm also a Manifest spec editor.]

You highlighted an interesting problem which is that it might have to be distributed across 3 specs (CSS, Manifest, and [not sure where the windowControlsOverlay object itself should go]). However, working across 3 specs while it is being developed could be messy.

My preference would be at least initially to find a home in one spec (e.g. and I think manifest-incubations is the right place) to write it all down in a centralized place, while it's in the "only one implementation" phase. If it's looking like it's going to become a permanent part of the web platform, maybe then we would move those pieces into Manifest, CSS and somewhere else.

Manifest has a precedent for doing things that "probably belong in CSS spec" inside itself: https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/#the-display-mode-media-feature, so it wouldn't be out of place to start speccing CSS variables in the manifest-incubations spec.

The other alternative is to create a brand new spec for WCO (either permanently or temporarily), which is similar to what we've done with Web Share Target. However, that predates manifest-incubations (which was created precisely to incubate things like Web Share Target so they didn't have to live in their own disconnected specs).

To summarize, options are (in my personal order of preference):
  1. Spec all of it in manifest-incubations.
  2. Spec all of it in its own separate document.
  3. Spec pieces of it in manifest, CSS and somewhere else (that could be in manifest, or its own spec document).
At least initially. Things can always be moved around.

Happy to discuss further, and review spec PRs.

Matt

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Diego Gonzalez

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May 21, 2021, 12:32:52 PM5/21/21
to Matt Giuca, Kenneth Christiansen, blink-dev

Thank you Matt,

 

Taken into consideration all the feedback I’ve gotten back from different sources I will try specing WCO in it’s own document inside WICG for now. Thanks for the feedback!

 

Regards,

 

Diego González-Zúñiga

PM, Microsoft Edge

 

 

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Matt Giuca

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May 23, 2021, 11:38:55 PM5/23/21
to Diego Gonzalez, Kenneth Christiansen, blink-dev
That sounds good.

Please reach out to me if you want an early review on spec text, or have questions about how to structure it.

I think https://w3c.github.io/web-share-target/ will be a good example of how to add a spec that plugs into the Manifest spec (in particular, note how it does "The following steps are added to the extension point"). On the down side, please note that Web Share Target still uses WebIDL to extend the manifest dictionary, which is no longer how the Web App Manifest spec works (it is out of date), so don't copy that part.

Matt
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