Following the Open Web principles laid out in the Mozilla Manifesto7
, web applications should be built on
technologies that are open, accessible and as interoperable as possible, and should run in a standards compatible web
browser without plugins, extensions or additional runtimes. In December 2010, Tim Berners-Lee – the inventor and
founder of the World Wide Web – published an article in which he called the trend towards custom-built native web
apps “disturbing”, because that trend divides information into separate content silos that are isolated from each
other8
. Such content is off the Open Web, and usually under the control of an individual company. Typically, one
cannot bookmark, copy or e-mail a link to such a page using a web browser. Rather, one must explicitly download,
install and use (and later upgrade) a vendor-specific app from a vendor-specific app store for each device platform to
access such content.