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First take on Application Names section
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ernesto-jimenez committed Nov 26, 2013
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9 changes: 7 additions & 2 deletions respecConfig.js
Expand Up @@ -36,8 +36,13 @@ var respecConfig = {
mailto: 'w3c@marcosc.com',
company: 'Mozilla',
companyURL: 'http://mozilla.com/'
}
],
},
{
name: 'Ernesto Jiménez',
url: 'http://ernesto-jimenez.com',
mailto: 'me@ernesto-jimenez.com'
}
],

// name of the WG
wg: 'Web and Mobile Interest Group (WebMob)',
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162 changes: 111 additions & 51 deletions sections/names.html
@@ -1,54 +1,114 @@
<h2>
Names
</h2>
<p>
Native applications can have multiple names. Because of this, you can
find them in multiple ways.
</p>
<p>
Web applications, because of HTML's origin as a document-publishing
format, have a "title" and these titles are applied "per page" basis
using HTML's &lt;title&gt; element. This is annoying. It means constantly
having to fix the name when you add to home screen.
</p>
<p>
HTML5 provides a solution, "application-name":
</p>
<pre class="highlight">
&lt;head&gt;
...
&lt;meta name="application-name" content="Awesome App!"&gt;
...
&lt;/head&gt;
</pre>
<p>
HTML5 limits this to 1 name:
</p>
<p>
HTML says:
</p>
<h2>Application Names</h2>

<h3>Usage in native apps</h3>

<p>Native platforms sometimes allow developers to define more than one display
name for different use cases. The three options are:</p>

<ol>
<li>Define a single display name. E.g.: Windows Phone and Firefox OS.</li>
<li>Define a default display name and an optional short name: the platform
uses whether to use the long or the short name depending on where it's going
to be used. E.g.: iOS applications and W3C Widgets</li>
<li>Define a default display name and allow fine-grained control to set
display names for different use cases. E.g.: Android Manifest file allows
fine-grained control on the display name to be shown in the home screen,
intents and different activities.</li>
</ol>

<p>iOS and Android developers also need to define a listings name during the
application submision process to the store which is used in the store listings.
The Windows Store, on the other hand, requires developers to use the same app
name in the manifest and the store.</p>

<h3>Usage in web applications</h3>

<p>Web applications have traditionally used the "title" element since it was
traditionally available in the standards. However, due to HTML's origin as a
document-publishing format, titles are applied "per page" and tend to be more
descriptive or include status messages. This is annoying. It means users have
to fix the name when you add to the home screen to remove page-specific or
status messages.</p>

<p>HTML5 provides a solution, "application-name":</p>

<pre class="highlight">&lt;head&gt; ... &lt;meta name="application-name" content="Awesome App!"&gt; ... &lt;/head&gt;</pre>

<p>HTML says:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>
The value must be a short free-form string giving the name of the Web
application that the page represents. If the page is not a Web
application, the application-name metadata name must not be used. There
must not be more than one meta element with its name attribute set to
the value application-name per document. User agents may use the
application name in UI in preference to the page's title, since the
title might include status messages and the like relevant to the status
of the page at a particular moment in time instead of just being the
name of the application.
</p>
<p>The value must be a short free-form string giving the name of the Web
application that the page represents. If the page is not a Web application, the
application-name metadata name must not be used. There must not be more than
one meta element with its name attribute set to the value application-name per
document. User agents may use the application name in UI in preference to the
page's title, since the title might include status messages and the like
relevant to the status of the page at a particular moment in time instead of
just being the name of the application.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Support in browsers: Internet Explorer
</p>
<p>
In the <a href="https://gist.github.com/7454160">October data set</a>,
there were 1629 sites using this string. The search query used:
</p>
<pre class="highlight">
find ./ -name "*ml.txt" | xargs grep -l "application-name" &gt;
application-name.txt
</pre>

<h3>Support in browsers</h3>

<h4>Internet Explorer</h4>
<blockquote>
<p>The "application-name" metadata defines the name of the Pinned site
application instance. This is the name that appears in a tooltip when
hovering over the Pinned site button on the Windows 7 taskbar. The
application name is also appended to the window title of the Pinned site
application instance.</p>
<p>If this element is missing, the document title is used instead.</p>
</blockquote>

<h4>Safari Mobile</h4>

<p>Since iOS6, apple supports it's own version of "application-name" metadata
called "apple-mobile-web-app-title". However, it doesn't use "application-name"
(TODO: VERIFY)</p>

<h4>Chrome Mobile</h4>

<p>TODO: CHECK</p>

<h3>Current tag ussage</h3>

<p>We analysed the <a href="https://gist.github.com/7454160">October data
set</a> (78,156 sites) to review the ussage of the different meta tags to
define names:</p>

<ol>
<li><strong>"application-name"</strong>: used in 1,571 sites.</li>
<li><strong>"apple-mobile-web-app-title"</strong>: used in 244 sites. 50 of
those sites used "application-name" too.</li>
</ol>

<p>We also analysed the length of the content of these tags (TODO: FIX wrong
numbers due to character encoding issues):</p>

<table border="1">
<thead>
<tr>
<td>metadata</td>
<td>min</td>
<td>max</td>
<td>mean</td>
<td>median</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>"application-name"</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>312</td>
<td>20</td>
<td>13</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>"apple-mobile-web-app-title"</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>190</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>8</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

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