1057348 - [User Story] Launch a hosted web app directly from an app result

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1062316

(Marketplace Graveyard :: Consumer Pages, defect)

Description

[Ben Francis [:benfrancis]]

I can't find a bug filed for this so...

As a user I want to launch a hosted web app directly from an app result, without having to install it first.


If you browse to the listing of a hosted app on the Marketplace using a non-Firefox browser we disable the install button, say "this app is unavailable for your platform" and provide no option to just navigate straight to the hosted app, even if it would work (bug 933535).

For example, the Firefox Marketplace is completely useless when using iOS, even though much of the content would work there.

Rather than provide no useful functionality, we could provide a hyperlink to the hosted app, then the user can use whatever mechanism their user agent provides to add that content to their homescreen, without needing to rely on the Open Web Apps installation API which is currently not supported on any other platform and has so far not had much luck with web standardisation https://github.com/w3c/manifest/issues/157

Another use case for this is that even if I'm using a user agent which does support the installation API, I might just want to surf to a web app to use it once, without having to install it on my device.

It makes no sense to exclude other user agents from accessing content curated in the Firefox Marketplace because they don't support the installation API, if that content would otherwise work fine in that user agent.

Inspired by https://twitter.com/sil/status/502738840139083777

Comment 1

[Ben Francis [:benfrancis]]

Peter, Ted, is this similar to the prototype you're working on?

Comment 3

[Ted Clancy [:tedders1]]

Yeah, sounds like the same thing to me.