IETF
Embedded Web Package Use Case
Web technologies are increasingly used for embedded systems.
Already hundreds of millions of devices.
The most straightforward use cases just use the file protocol
Some use cases also use a server,
basically loopback
But the majority of devices are severely resource constrained by comparison...
Ultimately your embedded device comes with an application (at least one).
That application can't depend on the network on first load
But it almost always will want to update when the network is available.
I'd like to ship you an e-reader with some books, or a cookbook with some recipes - etc. These exist as web resources, and over time content, design, etc will change.
The Web has always assumed your first interaction with a site would be after fetching it from a domain.
Many features are designed around this, creating some interesting challenges.
At the same time, the web has greatly expanded its capabilities, including offline.
There is simply a single significant disconnect: The assumption that first content always comes from online.
How can I bridge the two worlds?
Today, embedded uses wind up solving/re-solving much complexity to bridge this gap.
What we really want is to simply bootstrap a service worker with its offline content for embedded and then let all of the Web technologies work fluidly as they do elsewhere..
This use case does not require a model of universal trust and signing - simply a uniform way to configure a specific device or browser startup to trust a package itself.
No local servers necessary
No "is it the web or isn't it?" disparity
It's just a standard offline webapp.
... the ability to provide with my OS image, a service worker and bundle for foo.com, and have it initialize.