If you’re going to make a manifest file for an existing site, start with this very handy tool. You give it the URL of your site and it then parses the content for existing metadata to create a best first stab at a manifest JSON file.
There’s a good discussion here (kicked off by Jen) about providing different theme-color values in a web app manifest to match prefers-color-scheme in media queries.
Turning your existing website into a progressive web “app”—a far more appealing prospect than trying to create an entirely new app-shell architecture:
…they are an enhancement of your existing website which should take no longer than a few hours and have no negative effect on unsupported browsers.
Rich suggests another reason why the UX of websites on mobile is so shit these days:
The path to installing a native app is well trodden. We search the App Store (or ironically follow a link from a website), hit ‘Get’ and the app is downloaded to our phone’s home screen, ready to use any time with a simple tap.
A PWA can also live on your home screen, nicely indistinguishable from a native app. But the journey to getting a PWA – or indeed any web app – onto your home screen remains convoluted to say the least. This is the lack of equivalence I’m driving at. I wonder if the mobile web experience would suck as badly if web apps could be installed just as easily as native apps?
Remember when every company rushed to make an app? Airlines, restaurants, even your local coffee shop. Back then, it made some sense. Browsers weren’t as powerful, and apps had unique features like notifications and offline access. But fast-forward to today, and browsers can do all that. Yet businesses still push native apps as if it’s 2010, and we’re left downloading apps for things that should just work on the web.
This is all factually correct, but alas as Cory Doctorow points out, you can’t install an ad-blocker in a native app. To you and me, that’s a bug. To short-sighted businesses, it’s a feature.
(When I say “ad-blocker”, I mean “tracking-blocker”.)
Hallelujah! Apple have backed down on their petulant plan to sabatoge homescreen apps.
I’m very grateful to the Open Web Advocacy group for standing up to this bullying.
Debugging an error message.
If you’re thinking of making a native app, think again.
Apple are planning to kill mobile web apps. This is not an exaggeration. We must stop them.
Mobile Safari finally ships the feature we’ve all been waiting for …but hardly anyone is going to get to use it.
Between the physical and the digital. Between native apps and the World Wide Web.