Indexing your offline-capable pages with the Content Indexing API

A Chrome-only API for adding offline content to an index that can be exposed in Android’s “downloads” list. It just shipped in the lastest version of Chrome.

I’m not a fan of browser-specific non-standards but you can treat this as an enhancement—implementing it doesn’t harm non-supporting browsers and you can use feature detection to test for it.

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minimum interesting service worker

An interesting idea from Tantek for an offline page that links off to an archived copy of the URL you’re trying to reach—useful for when you’re site goes down (though not for when the user’s internet connection is down).

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It’s Time to Build a Progressive Web App. Here’s How – The New Stack

Much as I appreciate the optimism of this evaluation, I don’t hold out much hope that people’s expectations are going to change any time soon:

Indeed, when given a choice, users will opt for the [native] app version of a platform because it’s been considered the gold standard for reliability. With progressive web apps (PWAs), that assumption is about to change.

Nonetheless, this is a level-headed look at what a progressive web app is, mercifully free of hand-waving:

  • App is served through HTTPS.
  • App has a web app manifest with at least one icon. (We’ll talk more about the manifest shortly.)
  • App has a registered service worker with a fetch event handler. (More on this later too.)

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How to make MPAs that are as fast as SPAs | Go Make Things

The headline is a little misleading because if you follow this advice, your multi-page apps will be much much faster than single page apps, especially when you include that initial page load of a single page app.

Here’s a quick high-level summary of what I do…

  1. Serve pre-rendered, mostly static HTML.
  2. Inline everything, including CSS and JavaScript.
  3. Use mostly platform-native JavaScript, and as little of it as possible.
  4. Minify and gzip all the things.
  5. Lean heavily on service workers.

That’s an excellent recipe for success right there!

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Now THAT’S What I Call Service Worker! – A List Apart

This is terrific! Jeremy shows how you can implement a fairly straightforward service worker for performance gains, but then really kicks it up a notch with a recipe for turning a regular website into a speedy single page app without framework bloat.

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Trust

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When service workers met framesets

The browser equivalent of a Roman legion showing up in a space opera.

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