So you're right in both regards. Naming things is hard, and Google certainly hasn't helped the confusion as you mentioned. With that said, what I've gathered is that its both a design approach and an end goal. The end goal is portability. Whether you make it to the user's homescreen or they only view your page once, the idea is that they should be able to do everything that they want to with your site (provided their device is capable) and making the site aware of what the device is capable.
So for instance, if you have a share button that wants to use the Share API then you should check to see if the UA has the Share API and then only add it to the interface if the support is there. Etc, etc. This all leads up to Service Workers and making your web site/app work well offline and indistinguishable from a native app, if the user so pleases.
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So you're right in both regards. Naming things is hard, and Google certainly hasn't helped the confusion as you mentioned. With that said, what I've gathered is that its both a design approach and an end goal. The end goal is portability. Whether you make it to the user's homescreen or they only view your page once, the idea is that they should be able to do everything that they want to with your site (provided their device is capable) and making the site aware of what the device is capable.
So for instance, if you have a share button that wants to use the Share API then you should check to see if the UA has the Share API and then only add it to the interface if the support is there. Etc, etc. This all leads up to Service Workers and making your web site/app work well offline and indistinguishable from a native app, if the user so pleases.