We could add further structured metadata items to the manifest of each app. It could be either stored in the original zip, or separately by the store. The store web app frontend could provide filters for these metadata. Combinations of filters should be invoked by deep linking using the URL fragment (URI anchor). Some of these may be mutually exclusive categories, while others may be overlapping tags. Most of these could be fairly objective, while others would be somewhat subjective (small vs. large). Here are a few possibilities.
Exclusive categories:
- tools, games (see package managers for further subcategories)
- no GPU required, requires WebGL 1.0, requires WebGL 2.0, requires WebGPU
- no P2P realtime channel required, optional P2P, requires P2P
- interactive multi-user (e.g., parallel or turn-based play in games, automatic conflict resolution in an editor), basic multi-user (e.g., high score chart in games, whole data based editor submission), single user
- user count: unlimited, limit >4, =4, =3, =2, =1
- whether it generates notifications
- whether it is compatible with multi-device (e.g., reliance on local storage, device identifiers or platform-specific behavior can prohibit this)
- …
Possibly overlapping tags:
- one per language code to which the app is internationalized (this could be collected automatically by loading the app in a headless browser for each of the most common hundred language codes and check for any difference or
langHTML attributes) - …
Filters not requiring further changes:
- whether file size is up to 140_000B (“small” according to
x <= PRE_MSG_ATTACHMENT_SIZE_THRESHOLD) - …
Many of these properties would be best maintained by the developers, but the app store curators can also determine them via testing and code review. The initial value of some of these properties could also be predicted based on simple automation, such as by textually searching for specific API invocations in the source code.
Inspired by package managers that offer extensive taxonomies of tags and categories: