[whatwg] Installable web apps

[Aaron Boodman]

This has come up before, but since Google has officially announced the
project at IO, and Mozilla has voiced interest in the idea on their
blog, I felt like it might be a good to revisit.

Google would like to make today's web apps "installable" in Chrome.
>From a user's point of view, installing a web app would:

- Give it a permanent access point in the browser with a big juicy icon
- Allow the browser to treat a web app as a conceptual unit (eg give
it special presentation, show how much storage it uses)
- Add some light integration with the OS
- (optionally) Pre-grant some permissions that would otherwise have to
be requested one-at-a-time (eg geolocation, notifications)
- (optionally) Grant access to some APIs that would otherwise be
inaccessible (eg system clipboard, permanent storage)

There is some more background on our thinking at these two URL:

http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/
http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs

We have started implementing this using Chrome's current extension
system. However, we'd like it if installation could eventually work in
other browsers. Is there any interest from other vendors in
collaborating on the design of such a system?

Thanks,

- a