Progressive web apps: a love story

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Progressive web apps: a love story

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offline-2016-05

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Progressive web apps: a love story

@nolanlawson

Hi everybody.

@nolanlawson

I'm Nolan Lawson. Sometimes I make "here's how big of a sub sandwich I had for lunch" hands, or as Mariko taught me they're called in Japanese, "pottery hands" (ろくろ回す手).
I work at Squarespace, and I help maintain PouchDB.

2010: Android was young

Pokédroid

  • 440k+ downloads
  • 9,700+ reviews
  • 4.8 stars
  • Top 10 in category "Entertainment"

Why was Pokédroid so popular?

Many alternatives on the web

  • Bulbapedia
  • Marriland
  • Serebii
  • GameFAQs

What Pokédroid had that no others had:

OFFLINE!

It's so nice to be able to be on the road playing Pokémon and having a quick reference without all the large guidebooks. – Google Play review

3.5MB SQLite database

2011: Pokédroid DMCA'd 😢

  • Publishing to app store asserts IP ownership
  • Nintendo wary of apps
  • Web sites okay

In 2011, you could not build Pokédroid using web technology alone.

2016: progressive web apps

Coined by Alex Russell of Google

https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps-escaping-tabs-without-losing-our-soul/

Alex Russell

Profile of a PWA

  • Works offline
  • Launches from home screen
  • "Feels" like a native app
  • Push notifications (optional)
  • Background sync (optional)

What changed?

  • AppCache → ServiceWorker
  • LocalStorage/WebSQL → IndexedDB
  • Touch icons → Web App Manifest
  • Save to homescreen → installable webapp

Galaxy Nexus (2011), Android 4.3

In 2011, you couldn't build a high-performance, immersive offline app with web technologies.

In 2016, you can.

Thanks!

http://nolanlawson.github.io/offline-2016-05

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/progressive-web-apps/infohttp://www.pocketjavascript.com/blog/2015/11/23/introducing-pokedex-org