Journal tags: samsunginternet

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sparkline

Service workers in Samsung Internet browser

I was getting reports of some odd behaviour with the service worker on thesession.org, the Irish music website I run. Someone emailed me to say that they kept getting the offline page, even when their internet connection was perfectly fine and the site was up and running.

They didn’t mind answering my pestering follow-on questions to isolate the problem. They told me that they were using the Samsung Internet browser on Android. After a little searching, I found this message on a Github thread about using waitUntil. It’s from someone who works on the Samsung Internet team:

Sadly, the asynchronos waitUntil() is not implemented yet in our browser. Yes, we will implement it but our release cycle is so far. So, for a long time, we might not resolve the issue.

A-ha! That explains the problem. See, here’s the pattern I was using:

  1. When someone requests a file,
  2. fetch that file from the network,
  3. create a copy of the file and cache it,
  4. return the contents.

Step 1 is the event listener:

// 1. When someone requests a file
addEventListener('fetch', fetchEvent => {
  let request = fetchEvent.request;
  fetchEvent.respondWith(

Steps 2, 3, and 4 are inside that respondWith:

// 2. fetch that file from the network
fetch(request)
.then( responseFromFetch => {
  // 3. create a copy of the file and cache it
  let copy = responseFromFetch.clone();
  caches.open(cacheName)
  .then( cache => {
    cache.put(request, copy);
  })
  // 4. return the contents.
  return responseFromFetch;
})

Step 4 might well complete while step 3 is still running (remember, everything in a service worker script is asynchronous so even though I’ve written out the steps sequentially, you never know what order the steps will finish in). That’s why I’m wrapping that third step inside fetchEvent.waitUntil:

// 2. fetch that file from the network
fetch(request)
.then( responseFromFetch => {
  // 3. create a copy of the file and cache it
  let copy = responseFromFetch.clone();
  fetchEvent.waitUntil(
    caches.open(cacheName)
    .then( cache => {
      cache.put(request, copy);
    })
  );
  // 4. return the contents.
  return responseFromFetch;
})

If a browser (like Samsung Internet) doesn’t understand the bit where I say fetchEvent.waitUntil, then it will throw an error and execute the catch clause. That’s where I have my fifth and final step: “try looking in the cache instead, but if that fails, show the offline page”:

.catch( fetchError => {
  console.log(fetchError);
  return caches.match(request)
  .then( responseFromCache => {
    return responseFromCache || caches.match('/offline');
  });
})

Normally in this kind of situation, I’d use feature detection to check whether a browser understands a particular API method. But it’s a bit tricky to test for support for asynchronous waitUntil. That’s okay. I can use a try/catch statement instead. Here’s what my revised code looks like:

fetch(request)
.then( responseFromFetch => {
  let copy = responseFromFetch.clone();
  try {
    fetchEvent.waitUntil(
      caches.open(cacheName)
      .then( cache => {
        cache.put(request, copy);
      })
    );
  } catch (error) {
    console.log(error);
  }
  return responseFromFetch;
})

Now I’ve managed to localise the error. If a browser doesn’t understand the bit where I say fetchEvent.waitUntil, it will execute the code in the catch clause, and then carry on as usual. (I realise it’s a bit confusing that there are two different kinds of catch clauses going on here: on the outside there’s a .then()/.catch() combination; inside is a try{}/catch{} combination.)

At some point, when support for async waitUntil statements is universal, this precautionary measure won’t be needed, but for now wrapping them inside try doesn’t do any harm.

There are a few places in chapter five of Going Offline—the chapter about service worker strategies—where I show examples using async waitUntil. There’s nothing wrong with the code in those examples, but if you want to play it safe (especially while Samsung Internet doesn’t support async waitUntil), feel free to wrap those examples in try/catch statements. But I’m not going to make those changes part of the errata for the book. In this case, the issue isn’t with the code itself, but with browser support.

Installing Progressive Web Apps

When I was testing the dConstruct Audio Archive—which is now a Progressive Web App—I noticed some interesting changes in how Chrome on Android offers the “add to home screen” prompt.

It used to literally say “add to home screen.”

Getting the “add to home screen” prompt for https://huffduffer.com/ on Android Chrome. And there’s the “add to home screen” prompt for https://html5forwebdesigners.com/ HTTPS + manifest.json + Service Worker = “Add to Home Screen” prompt. Add to home screen.

Now it simply says “add.”

The dConstruct Audio Archive is now a Progressive Web App

I vaguely remember there being some talk of changing the labelling, but I could’ve sworn it was going to change to “install”. I’ve got to be honest, just having the word “add” doesn’t seem to provide much context. Based on the quick’n’dirty usability testing I did with some co-workers, it just made things confusing. “Add what?” “What am I adding?”

Additionally, the prompt appeared immediately on the first visit to the site. I thought there was supposed to be an added “engagement” metric in order for the prompt to appear; that the user needs to visit the site more than once.

You’d think I’d be happy that users will be presented with the home-screen prompt immediately, but based on the behaviour I saw, I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Here’s what I observed:

  1. The user types the URL archive.dconstruct.org into the address bar.
  2. The site loads.
  3. The home-screen prompt slides up from the bottom of the screen.
  4. The user immediately moves to dismiss the prompt (cue me interjecting “Don’t close that!”).

This behaviour is entirely unsurprising for three reasons:

  1. We web designers and web developers have trained users to dismiss overlays and pop-ups if they actually want to get to the content. Nobody’s going to bother to actually read the prompt if there’s a 99% chance it’s going to say “Sign up to our newsletter!” or “Take our survey!”.
  2. The prompt appears below the “line of death” so there’s no way to tell it’s a browser or OS-level dialogue rather than a JavaScript-driven pop-up from the site.
  3. Because the prompt now appears on the first visit, no trust has been established between the user and the site. If the prompt only appeared on later visits (or later navigations during the first visit) perhaps it would stand a greater chance of survival.

It’s still possible to add a Progressive Web App to the home screen, but the option to do that is hidden behind the mysterious three-dots-vertically-stacked icon (I propose we call this the shish kebab icon to distinguish it from the equally impenetrable hamburger icon).

I was chatting with Andreas from Mozilla at the View Source conference last week, and he was filling me in on how Firefox on Android does the add-to-homescreen flow. Instead of a one-time prompt, they’ve added a persistent icon above the “line of death” (the icon is a combination of a house and a plus symbol).

When a Firefox 58 user arrives on a website that is served over HTTPS and has a valid manifest, a subtle badge will appear in the address bar: when tapped, an “Add to Home screen” confirmation dialog will slide in, through which the web app can be added to the Android home screen.

This kind of badging also has issues (without the explicit text “add to home screen”, the user doesn’t know what the icon does), but I think a more persistently visible option like this works better than the a one-time prompt.

Firefox is following the lead of the badging approach pioneered by the Samsung Internet browser. It provides a plus symbol that, when pressed, reveals the options to add to home screen or simply bookmark.

What does it mean to be an App?

I don’t think Chrome for Android has any plans for this kind of badging, but they are working on letting the site authors provide their own prompts. I’m not sure this is such a good idea, given our history of abusing pop-ups and overlays.

Sadly, I feel that any solution that relies on an unrequested overlay is doomed. That’s on us. The way we’ve turned browsing the web—especially on mobile—into a frustrating chore of dismissing unwanted overlays is a classic tragedy of the commons. We blew it. Users don’t trust unrequested overlays, and I can’t blame them.

For what it’s worth, my opinion is that ambient badging is a better user experience than one-time prompts. That opinion is informed by a meagre amount of testing though. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been doing more detailed usability testing of both approaches. I assume that Google, Mozilla, and Samsung are doing this kind of testing, and it would be really great to see the data from that (hint, hint).

But it might well be that ambient badging is just too subtle to even be noticed by the user.

On one end of the scale you’ve got the intrusiveness of an add-to-home-screen prompt, but on the other end of the scale you’ve got the discoverability problem of a subtle badge icon. I wonder if there might be a compromise solution—maybe a badge icon that pulses or glows on the first or second visit?

Of course that would also need to be thoroughly tested.