[webkit-dev] Request for position on app history API

[Domenic Denicola]

Hi webkit-dev,

The Chrome team, with some help from Mozilla folks, have been working on a proposal for a new history/navigation API aimed specifically at the needs of single-page apps. The current name is the "app history API". You can see the explainer at [1] (and the name bikeshedding thread at [2] ��).

So far the API has a lot of web developer enthusiasm and engagement on the issue tracker, including a polyfill [3]. We've been prototyping behind a flag in Chromium and are planning to go to origin trial soon, as we have some large sites that want to try conditionally switching out their current router code for code based on app history to see if this brings about the desired simplifications or shakes out any bugs. We also have a lot of web platform tests [4] and a mostly-complete but definitely still WIP spec [5].

We'd love to get your thoughts, whether they're a general appraisal or a more in-depth dive into the API choices and spec. I'm hopeful we can together make developers really happy with a new API for this historically-tricky problem space.

Other links you may enjoy are the Mozilla standards positions issue [6] and the initial W3C TAG design review [7].

Thanks so much for your time,
-Domenic

[1]: https://github.com/WICG/app-history
[2]: https://github.com/WICG/app-history/issues/83
[3]: https://github.com/frehner/appHistory
[4]: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/tree/master/app-history
[5]: https://wicg.github.io/app-history/
[6]: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/543
[7]: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/605