I assume they left the name blank in order to have the name blank in the splash screen. I think this hack is harmless and even useful. At least it's better than rolling out now a quick manifest declaration saying "no-name-in-the-manifest".

Given all of above, I think (2) is the solution. To be more precise I think we should fall back to short_name if name is empty. Owen, do you have an opinion on this?

I think you meant (1) as your text doesn't match Owen's description for (2). Can you clarify?

Correct, I meant (1), thanks for noticing!

We already have a fallback to short_name if name is empty. Unfortunately, it looks like it only works if name is null (i.e. not provided) rather than explicitly set to the empty string.

This should be a pretty simple fix.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/0b543dd3a72f7d63717ee4c99e74bf01902a1c7c

commit 0b543dd3a72f7d63717ee4c99e74bf01902a1c7c
Author: dominickn <dominickn@chromium.org>
Date: Tue May 23 04:14:21 2017

Properly fall back to manifest short_name when name is empty.

If a PWA includes a "name" field in their manifest, but explicitly sets
it to the empty string, it would have an app banner displayed with no
text, as well as no title on its splash screen.

This CL fixes the bug by properly checking if the "name" string is
empty, rather than just null. This check is already performed by the
InstallableManager in the process of determining whether or not a site
is a valid PWA. An additional test is added to ensure the correct
functionality.

BUG= 722615 

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/2900623002
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#473806}

[modify] https://crrev.com/0b543dd3a72f7d63717ee4c99e74bf01902a1c7c/chrome/android/javatests/src/org/chromium/chrome/browser/banners/AppBannerManagerTest.java
[modify] https://crrev.com/0b543dd3a72f7d63717ee4c99e74bf01902a1c7c/chrome/browser/banners/app_banner_manager.cc
[add] https://crrev.com/0b543dd3a72f7d63717ee4c99e74bf01902a1c7c/chrome/test/data/banners/manifest_empty_name.json