An entire generation of apps-that-should-have-been web pages has sprung up, often shoehorned into supposedly cross-platform frameworks that create a subpar user experience sludge. Nowhere is this more true than for media — how many apps from newspapers or magazines have you installed, solely for a very specific purpose like receiving breaking news alerts? How many of those apps are just wrappers around web views? How many of those apps should have been web pages?
In my mind, the only way to “compete” with native apps is to do better than native apps—and with the web platform consistently improving and enabling us to produce app-like experiences, with Service Workers, ES6+ JavaScript, modern CSS and Web Components: we are very much on the path to do better than native apps.
This seems to work quite nicely: convert your progressive web app into an APK file that you can then submit to the Google Play store (you’ll still have to go through all the hassle of submitting the app, but still).
I tested this with The Session and sure enough, it looks like it’s available to download from Google Play.
I had a great time chatting with Lea and Emily about service workers on this episode of their podcast—they’re such great hosts!
Here’s the huffduffed audio.
Very valuable observations from Paul on his travels, talking to developers and business people about progressive web apps—there’s some confusion out there.
My personal feeling is that everyone is really hung up on the A in PWA: ‘App’. It’s the success and failure of the branding of the concept; ‘App’ is in the name, ‘App’ is in the conscious of many users and businesses and so the associations are quite clear.
Adriana Blum lists progressive web apps that are doing very, very well from Twitter, Trivago, Starbucks, Forbes, Debebhams, West Elm, Washington Post, Pinterest, AliExpress, and Lancôme.
Instead of choosing between the immediacy of a mobile website and the rich experience offered by native apps, you can now offer your target audiences the best of both and improve the commercial performance of your business to boot.
I never would’ve known about the `display-mode` media feature if I hadn’t been writing about it.
Browsers are still trying to figure out how to highlight progressive web apps.
The Clearleft website works offline …and about time too!
A presentation at An Event Apart Seattle 2018.
The Google developer relations team are dishing out some inconvenient truths.