Support for splashscreens member (W3C)

[marcoscaceres]

Just a heads up that we've added a splashscreens member to the W3C Web Manifest spec. However, we are still gathering implementer feedback and we currently don't have strong commitment from any vendor to support them (i.e., please don't add them to ManifoldJS just yet! 😄).

Will report back with more info soon. Design wise, they take the exact same object as icons (an array of image objects), so validation/transformation will be identical.

[nbellocam]

Thanks for sharing this! I added it to the backlog to keep it in radar.

[boyofgreen]

Marcos,
I believe I saw Firefox add some tasks for supporting the splashscreens member. I'm still planting to hold off a bit for it to solidify, but let me know if you think we should move forward sooner.

[marcoscaceres]

Hold for a bit, I haven't gotten a straight answer out of the Google guys if they are going to support it or not (need to also check with Microsoft).

[boyofgreen]

Double check with Alex lu, but from the MS side it seems to make sense for us.

[marcoscaceres]

@boyofgreen great to hear. Will ping Alex also.

[boyofgreen]

i think we are now ready to implement this, it is a great add

[marcoscaceres]

@boyofgreen, sounds good. Please note that there are some ongoing discussions over at the w3c:

• how should we set the background color of the splash screen? Add background color for splash screen.  w3c/manifest#390
• Should we support 9-patch images for splash screens? Add support for 9-Patch Images for splash screen w3c/manifest#373
• should the developer or the user agent control when the splash screen is removed? A means to control how long a splash screen should remain on screen.  w3c/manifest#372
• What should happen if starting the application can happen in less than ~300-500ms? Should the splash screen still be shown or just a background color? (proposed in Add background color for splash screen.  w3c/manifest#390)

We would really appreciate ManifoldJS team's feedback.

[f2bo]

As far as I can tell, there isn't support for splash screens in either Firefox or Chrome apps at the moment.

So, for the time being, this applies only to the Cordova-based apps generated by ManifoldJS and should be implemented in the ManifoldCordova plugin (cordova-plugin-hostedwebapp).

I've created a new issue in the plugin's repository to track this (pwa-builder/ManifoldCordova#37).

[ghost]

We added support for the W3C splash_screeens member in ManifoldCordova plugin (see pwa-builder/ManifoldCordova@07fda20).

[kenchris]

Just a heads-up. It seems that Chrome have chosen not to use the splash_screen and just generate splash screens from the 'background_color' plus an appropriate square icon from 'icons'

They are hiding the splash on first paint.

@marcoscaceres @anssiko

[kenchris]

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/09/using-web-app-manifest-to-set-solid-color-loading-screen

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/1be62c2b7f12a4a8108d3b23b479059c706ffc09