Push

Push notifications are finally arriving on iOS—hallelujah! Like I said last year, this is my number one wish for the iPhone, though not because I personally ever plan to use the feature:

When I’m evangelising the benefits of building on the open web instead of making separate iOS and Android apps, I inevitably get asked about notifications. As long as mobile Safari doesn’t support them—even though desktop Safari does—I’m somewhat stumped. There’s no polyfill for this feature other than building an entire native app, which is a bit extreme as polyfills go.

With push notifications in mobile Safari, the arguments for making proprietary apps get weaker. That’s good.

The announcement post is a bit weird though. It never uses the phrase “progressive web apps”, even though clearly the entire article is all about progressive web apps. I don’t know if this down to Not-Invented-Here syndrome by the Apple/Webkit team, or because of genuine legal concerns around using the phrase.

Instead, there are repeated references to “Home Screen apps”. This distinction makes some sense though. In order to use web push on iOS, your website needs to be added to the home screen.

I think that would be fair enough, if it weren’t for the fact that adding a website to the home screen remains such a hidden feature that even power users would be forgiven for not knowing about it. I described the steps here:

1. Tap the “share” icon. It’s not labelled “share.” It’s a square with an arrow coming out of the top of it.
2. A drawer pops up. The option to “add to home screen” is nowhere to be seen. You have to pull the drawer up further to see the hidden options.
3. Now you must find “add to home screen” in the list

• Copy
• Add to Reading List
• Add Bookmark
• Add to Favourites
• Find on Page
• Add to Home Screen
• Markup
• Print

As long as this remains the case, we can expect usage of web push on iOS to be vanishingly low. Hardly anyone is going to add a website to their home screen when their web browser makes it so hard.

If you’d like to people to install your progressive web app, you’ll almost certainly need to prompt people to do so. Here’s the page I made on thesession.org with instructions on how to add to home screen. I link to it from the home page of the site.

I wish that pages like that weren’t necessary. It’s not the best user experience. But as long as mobile Safari continues to bury the home screen option, we don’t have much choice but to tackle this ourselves.

It was 20 years ago today… - Web Directions

John’s article, A Dao Of Web Design, is twenty years old. If anything, it’s more relevant today than when it was written.

Here, John looks back on those twenty years, and forward to the next twenty…

Will PWAs Replace Native Mobile Apps? — Smashing Magazine

This article conflates progressive web apps with having an app shell architecture. That’s a real shame.

Offline Web Experiences with Jeremy Keith « CTRL+CLICK CAST

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.

10 Progressive Web App Examples that Brand Owners can Learn From - Iflexion

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.

Any Site can be a Progressive Web App - Jeremy Keith | DeltaV 2018 - YouTube

Here’s a really quick (ten minute) talk about the offline user experience that I gave at the Delta V conference recently. I’m quite happy with how it turned out—there’s something to be said for having a short and snappy time slot.

There’s a common misconception that making a Progressive Web App means creating a Single Page App with an app-shell architecture. But the truth is that literally any website can benefit from the performance boost that results from the combination of HTTPS + Service Worker + Web App Manifest.