🌱 Meeting minutes are available online.
Pre-recorded talks
Attendees need to view this content before the live sessions on 8 April, and may submit questions via GitHub in advance of the live discussion.
Captions in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are available on the videos (click '[cc]').
- Evolution of Quickapp (10') - Yongqing Dong, Xiaomi [video, slides]
- Mini App Runtime Architecture and Alliance Development Experience (17') - Tengyuan Zhang, Baidu [video, slides]
- Looking at the MiniApps Specifications from the Perspective of the Taro Cross-Platform Framework (12') - Jiajian Chen [video, slides]
- Design of the MiniApp Cross-Platform Technical Standards (36') - Xiongwei Hu [video, slides]
- MiniApps for Vehicle (10') - Qing An, Alibaba [video, slides]
Background
MiniApp as a new form of mobile application, leveraging both Web technologies (especially CSS and JavaScript) as well as capabilities of native applications, is gaining more and more popularity in the globe. To enhance the interoperability between MiniApp platforms and the Web, and between different MiniApp platforms (applications or operating systems that are hosts to MiniApps), mainstream MiniApp vendors and related stakeholders have been working together in W3C Chinese Web Interest Group since May 2019 and published a MiniApp Standardization White Paper in September 2019 as the initial standardization exploration for MiniApp technologies. As more global companies get interested in joining the MiniApp related discussion, the MiniApps Ecosystem Community Group was proposed and approved during TPAC 2019 so that the global Web community can join the discussion.
During the exploration phase, potential standard requirements have been identified due to the unique nature of MiniApp in comparison to the typical Web environment. Substantial research work and joint discussion with related W3C groups have been conducted to clarify the requirements and possible solutions for MiniApp standardization. For instance, the hosting platform may or may not be a browser, and the application construction may or may not be based on web resources. Therefore different but relevant technologies are used for UI configuration and rendering, resource packaging, and the API access to local system capabilities. Such cases have not been fully covered by existing Web standards such as Web Packaging, Web App Manifest, or Web APIs.
The MiniApps Working Group aims to harmonize the heterogeneous MiniApp ecosystem, enabling interoperability among the different MiniApp platforms, maximizing the convergence of MiniApps and the World Wide Web, reducing the development costs and facilitating the adoption of this technology. The Working Group has adopted the following proposals from the MiniApps CG recently:
- Lifecycle: spec / explainer
- Manifest: spec / explainer
- Packaging: spec / explainer
- Addressing: spec / explainer
- Widget Requirements
For an introduction of MiniApps, please refer to the article series on web.dev and Thomas Steiner's talk during TPAC 2020.
What is W3C?
W3C is a voluntary standards consortium that convenes organizations and communities to help structure productive discussions around existing and emerging technologies, and offers a Royalty-Free patent framework for Web Recommendations. W3C develops work based on the priorities of our members and our community.