Re: [manifest] screen sizes, Re: Review of Web Application Manifest Format and Management APIs

On Friday, May 25, 2012 at 4:34 PM, SULLIVAN, BRYAN L wrote:

> Marcos,  
>  
> Re "I thought we had stopped the whole designing for particular screen sizes, etc. a long time ago.", that may be the still-closely-held goal, but the reality is that designing for multiple screen sizes (and pixel densities) is still far from simple. Even with all the tools that have been developed in CSS and Media Queries.  
>  
> So if developers want to claim that they have focused their design on specific form factors (and presumably tested it thoroughly on them), this seems like a good thing as it allows them to be more certain that their apps won't be distributed to users of devices on which they won't work well (which will negatively impact the developer's reputation, use of the app, appstore etc), or if distributed to such users, will be clearly identified as not being designed for those devices.
>  
> Like many of the things we wanted to do in widget manifest structures in BONDI and WAC, if these get pulled from the plan the only fallback is developer ecosystem-specific app metadata, which in the end evaporates with the developer ecosystems, or never achieves widespread use or interoperability. So the problem is not solved for developers by leaving these things out of standards, where there is a strong use case.
>  

Still sounds to me like "Made for <insert everyone's favorite 90's browser here>, and best viewed at 800x600" … and look how well that turned out. Even if we don't focus on mobile devices, it seems like a silly requirement as I can just adjust my browser window to whatever size I want (there is no reason to believe I won't be able to do that on future mobile devices). I.e., screen size and application display area are not the same thing and this metadata attribute seems to assume so.    

--  
Marcos Caceres

Received on Friday, 25 May 2012 16:26:28 UTC