# Open Web Apps, common application functionality, and coexistence with refapp apps **URL:** \ **Category:** Development\ **Tags:** owa\ **Created:** [March 9, 2016, 6:35am UTC](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/open-web-apps-common-application-functionality-and-coexistence-with-refapp-apps/5179 "2016-03-09T06:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 8
**Author:** ![darius](https://talk.openmrs.org/user_avatar/talk.openmrs.org/darius/32/8082_2.png) [@darius](https://talk.openmrs.org/u/darius)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 1:41pm UTC](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/open-web-apps-common-application-functionality-and-coexistence-with-refapp-apps/5179/8 "2016-03-10T13:41:34Z")
Definitely curious to hear what @sunbiz thinks. I think our philosophy should be that these are _OpenMRS Open Web Apps_, not generic OWAs that could run on OpenMRS, DHIS2, or any arbitrary container. We’re trying to build an application out of coherent apps that form an EMR, not a collection of arbitrary apps. And we should have some proprietary OpenMRS extensions that we recommend people follow. Examples: - Add extensions like “openmrs-require-core-version” and “openmrs-require-modules” that the OWA module should check before starting the OWA - Add extensions like “openmrs-app-descriptor” for plugging into App Framework - We should recommend (but not require) that OWAs include something like “\< !-- import implementation-specific global CSS here – \>” and we replace this with a macro preprocessor. - We should recommend (but not require) that where possible OWAs depend on a “uicommons” OWA, and import the style guide CSS from this. I agree that we should publish versions of the style guide CSS to bower, in addition to making it available via a uicommons OWA. Also, I agree that we should make appframework depend on OWA, rather than the other way round. --- _[View the full topic](https://talk.openmrs.org/t/open-web-apps-common-application-functionality-and-coexistence-with-refapp-apps/5179)._