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Win10 PWA Terminology

2018 May 31, 8:26

Folks familiar with JavaScript UWP apps in Win10 have often been confused by what PWAs in Win10 actually are. TLDR: PWAs in Win10 are simply JavaScript UWP apps. The main difference between these JS UWP Apps and our non-PWA JS UWP apps are our target end developer audience, and how we get Win10 PWAs into the Microsoft Store. See this Win10 blog post on PWAs on Win10 for related info.

Web App

On the web a subset of web sites are web apps. These are web sites that have app like behavior - that is a user might call it an app like Outlook, Maps or Gmail. And they may also have a W3C app manifest.

A subset of web apps are progressive web apps. Progressive web apps are web apps that have a W3C app manifest and a service worker. Various OSes are beginning to support PWAs as first class apps on their platform. This is true for Win10 as well in which PWAs are run as a WWA.

Windows Web App

In Win10 a WWA (Windows Web App) is an unofficial term for a JavaScript UWP app. These are UWP apps so they have an AppxManifest.xml, they are packaged in an Appx package, they run in an App Container, they use WinRT APIs, and are installed via the Microsoft Store. Specific to WWAs though, is that the AppxManifest.xml specifies a StartPage attribute identifying some HTML content to be used as the app. When the app is activated the OS will create a WWAHost.exe process that hosts the HTML content using the EdgeHtml rendering engine.

Packaged vs Hosted Web App

Within that we have a notion of a packaged web app and an HWA (hosted web app). There's no real technical distinction for the end developer between these two. The only real difference is whether the StartPage identifies remote HTML content on the web (HWA), or packaged HTML content from the app's appx package (packaged web app). An end developer may create an app that is a mix of these as well, with HTML content in the package and HTML content from the web. These terms are more like ends on a continuum and identifying two different developer scenarios since the underlying technical aspect is pretty much identical.

Win10 PWA

Win10 PWAs are simply HWAs that specify a StartPage of a URI for a PWA on the web. These are still JavaScript UWP apps with all the same behavior and abilities as other UWP apps. We have two ways of getting PWAs into the Microsoft Store as Win10 PWAs. The first is PWA Builder which is a tool that helps PWA end developers create and submit to the Microsoft Store a Win10 PWA appx package. The second is a crawler that runs over the web looking for PWAs which we convert and submit to the Store using an automated PWA Builder-like tool to create a Win10 PWA from PWAs on the web (see Welcoming PWAs to Win10 for more info). In both cases the conversion involves examining the PWAs W3C app manifest and producing a corresponding AppxManifest.xml. Not all features supported by AppxManifest.xml are also available in the W3c app manifest. But the result of PWA Builder can be a working starting point for end developers who can then update the AppxManifest.xml as they like to support features like share targets or others not available in W3C app manifests.

PermalinkCommentsJS pwa uwp web

Tweet from David Risney

2016 Nov 4, 4:05
WinMDGraph graphs relationships between WinRT APIs https://github.com/david-risney/WinMDGraph/ . My initial version is up.
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Tweet from ClickHole

2016 Sep 7, 8:00
Silencing Dissent: Donald Trump Threw An Elderly Version Of Himself Out Of His Rally For Shouting ‘Beware Hubris!’ http://clckhl.co/pMKxUUH 
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Tweet from David_Risney

2016 Feb 1, 10:44
Chakra conversions between JavaScript objects and WinRT types: http://deletethis.net/dave/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fdavescoolblog.blogspot.com%2F2016%2F01%2Fjavascript-types-and-winrt-types.html … I've just updated to note how IPropertySet works.
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Retweet of FxSiteCompat

2016 Jan 27, 7:44
#Firefox 46 Developer Edition is out! Non-HTTPS pages w/ login form are now marked insecure https://www.fxsitecompat.com/versions/46/  pic.twitter.com/o2WZ6K2KxN
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JavaScript Types and WinRT Types

2016 Jan 21, 5:35PermalinkCommentschakra development javascript winrt

Retweet of tinysubversions

2015 Oct 12, 9:37
This is cool as heck http://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/?mbid=social_twitter#slide-1 … pic.twitter.com/BCnBDsSy8V
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Retweet of slightlylate

2015 Aug 19, 1:54
The thing where you remember old versions of the spec and, despite being the "expert" in the room, can't recall what was eventually decided.
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Retweet of tinysubversions

2015 Apr 14, 6:34
Sorry bro, hat don't lie pic.twitter.com/Y6wkBss8U0
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Tweet from David_Risney

2015 Mar 3, 4:06
How do you conditionally sprite/concat/shard based on http version? https://mattwilcox.net/web-development/http2-for-front-end-web-developers …
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Internet Archive lets you play one of the earliest computer...

2014 Apr 28, 9:39


Internet Archive lets you play one of the earliest computer games Space War! emulated in JavaScript in the browser.

This entry covers the historical context of Space War!, and instructions for working with our in-browser emulator. The system doesn’t require installed plugins (although a more powerful machine and recent browser version is suggested).

The JSMESS emulator (a conversion of the larger MESS project) also contains a real-time portrayal of the lights and switches of a Digital PDP-1, as well as links to documentation and manuals for this $800,000 (2014 dollars) minicomputer.

PermalinkCommentscomputer-game game video-game history internet-archive

FitBit and WebOC Application Compatibility Errors

2013 Aug 29, 7:17
I just got a FitBit One from my wife. Unfortunately I had issues running their app on my Windows 8.1 Preview machine. But I recognized the errors as IE compatibility issues, for instance an IE dialog popup from the FitBit app telling me about an error in the app's JavaScript. Given my previous post on WebOC versioning you may guess what I tried next. I went into the registry and tried out different browser mode and document mode versions until I got the FitBit software running without error. Ultimately I found the following registry value to work well ('FitBit connect.exe' set to DWORD decimal 8888).
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"Fitbit Connect.exe"=dword:000022b8

For those familiar with the Windows registry the above should be enough. For those not familiar, copy and paste the above into notepad, save as a file named "fitbit.reg", and then double click the reg file and say 'Yes' to the prompt. Hopefully in the final release of Windows 8.1 this won't be an issue.
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URI functions in Windows Store Applications

2013 Jul 25, 1:00PermalinkCommentsc# c++ javascript technical uri windows windows-runtime windows-store

Will Arnett Explains the Origins of His Arrested Development Chicken Dance

2013 May 8, 11:26

thebluthcompany:

To decide what Gob’s bad impression of a chicken might be, Arnett consulted on set in 2003 with series executive producers Mitch Hurwitz and James Vallely. They all tried out different versions for each other. “Jimmy started doing a little bit, then Mitch got up and did some, and then I began trying things,” remembers Arnett. “Picture three grown men hopping around, working out what it would be … They were pitching this really taunting dance, but I wanted to give it this very sharp, almost roosterlike, chest-sticking-out mannerism, like a real macho bravado dance.” And how did clapping get introduced to the move? “Because I wanted it to be only sort of threatening.”

Read More | Vulture

PermalinkCommentshumor chicken chicken-dance arrested-development

Funny People: Steve Heinrich, You Don’t Know Jack head writer | Interview | The Gameological Society

2012 Jul 1, 3:38

A veteran of the satirical trivia game series since its first heyday in the 1990s, Heinrich talks about Jack’s writing process, its long hiatus, and that short-lived live-action TV version.

PermalinkCommentsgame interview video-game you-dont-know-jack ydkj

ifc: This week on Comedy Bang! Bang! - Michael Cera!

2012 Jun 27, 3:38


ifc:

This week on Comedy Bang! Bang! - Michael Cera!

PermalinkCommentshumor comedy-bang-bang michael-cera video

HTTP Compression Documentation Reference

2012 Jun 13, 3:08
There's a lot of name reuse in HTTP compression so I've made the following to help myself keep it straight.
HTTP Content Coding Token gzip deflate compress
An encoding format produced by the file compression program "gzip" (GNU zip) The "zlib" format as described in RFC 1950. The encoding format produced by the common UNIX file compression program "compress".
Data Format GZIP file format ZLIB Compressed Data Format The compress program's file format
Compression Method Deflate compression method LZW
Deflate consists of LZ77 and Huffman coding

Compress doesn't seem to be supported by popular current browsers, possibly due to its past with patents.

Deflate isn't done correctly all the time. Some servers would send the deflate data format instead of the zlib data format and at least some versions of Internet Explorer expect deflate data format instead of zlib data format.

PermalinkCommentscompress compression deflate gzip http http-header technical zlib

Another Comedy Bang Bang preview clip this time with Zach...

2012 Apr 18, 6:02


Another Comedy Bang Bang preview clip this time with Zach Galifianakis.

PermalinkCommentszach-galifianakis comedy-bang-bang video humor preview scott-aukerman tv clip

paulftompkins: shahruz: Promo on IFC for the upcoming Comedy...

2012 Feb 29, 10:13
[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

paulftompkins:

shahruz:

Promo on IFC for the upcoming Comedy Bang Bang TV show!!!

BE EXCITED.

I am excited Paul.

PermalinkCommentshumor video comedy-bang-bang

Client Side Cross Domain Data YQL Hack

2012 Feb 27, 2:28

One of the more limiting issues of writing client side script in the browser is the same origin limitations of XMLHttpRequest. The latest version of all browsers support a subset of CORS to allow servers to opt-in particular resources for cross-domain access. Since IE8 there's XDomainRequest and in all other browsers (including IE10) there's XHR L2's cross-origin request features. But the vast majority of resources out on the web do not opt-in using CORS headers and so client side only web apps like a podcast player or a feed reader aren't doable.

One hack-y way around this I've found is to use YQL as a CORS proxy. YQL applies the CORS header to all its responses and among its features it allows a caller to request an arbitrary XML, HTML, or JSON resource. So my network helper script first attempts to access a URI directly using XDomainRequest if that exists and XMLHttpRequest otherwise. If that fails it then tries to use XDR or XHR to access the URI via YQL. I wrap my URIs in the following manner, where type is either "html", "xml", or "json":

        yqlRequest = function(uri, method, type, onComplete, onError) {
var yqlUri = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=" +
encodeURIComponent("SELECT * FROM " + type + ' where url="' + encodeURIComponent(uri) + '"');

if (type == "html") {
yqlUri += encodeURIComponent(" and xpath='/*'");
}
else if (type == "json") {
yqlUri += "&callback=&format=json";
}
...

This also means I can get JSON data itself without having to go through JSONP.
PermalinkCommentsxhr javascript yql client-side technical yahoo xdr cors
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