I endorse this message.
This manifesto is intended as a personal response to the current state of the web. It is a statement of intent and a call to arms, inviting you, the reader, to go forth and build humane websites, and to resist the erosion of the web we know and love.
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.)
We invite software developers to do their part, by
- ensuring their users can conveniently obtain a link to the currently open or selected resource via a user interface; and
- providing an application programming interface (API) to obtain or construct a link to that resource (i.e., to get its address and name).
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.
This in an intriguing promise (there’s no code yet):
A PWA typically requires writing a service worker, an app manifest and a ton of custom code. Progressier flattens the learning curve. Just add it to your html template — you’re done.
I worry that this one line of code will pull in many, many, many, many lines of JavaScript.
Automatically generates icons and splash screens based on Web App Manifest specs and Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Updates manifest.json and index.html files with the generated images.
A handy command line tool. Though be aware that it will generate the shit-ton of link elements for splash screens that Apple demands you provide for a multitude of different screen sizes.
Well, this could be very handy for Huffduffer!
Another directory of progressive web apps, this time maintained by Google.
I quite like the way it links through to a Lighthouse report. Here’s the listing for The Session, for example, and here’s the corresponding Lighthouse report.
What an excellent question! And what an excellent bit of sleuthing to get to the bottom of it. This is like linguistic spelunking on the World Wide Web.
Oh, and of course I love the little sidenote at the end.
I was just talking about how browser-based games are the perfect use-case for service workers. Andrzej Mazur breaks down how that would work:
It’s really great to hear about how Microsoft will be promoting progressive web apps as first-class citizens …but it’s really unhelpful that they’re using this fudgy definition:
Progressive Web Apps are just great web sites that can behave like native apps—or, perhaps, Progressive Web Apps are just great apps, powered by Web technologies and delivered with Web infrastructure.
Although they also give a more technical definition:
Technologically speaking, PWAs are web apps, progressively enhanced with modern web technologies (Service Worker, Fetch networking, Cache API, Push notifications, Web App Manifest) to provide a more app-like experience.
Nice try, slipping notifications in there like that, but no. No, no, no. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that one of the most annoying “features” of native apps is even desirable on the web.
If you want to use notifications, fine. But they are absolutely not a requirement for a progressive web app.
(A responsive design, on the other hand, totally is.)
Squee! The next time there’s an update for OS X and iOS, Safari will magically have service worker support! Not only that, but Safari on iOS will start using the information in web app manifests for adding to home screen.
That’s an impressive turnaround.
Here’s a nice one-sentence definition for the marketing folk:
A Progressive Web App is a regular website following a progressive enhancement strategy to deliver native-like user experiences by using modern Web standards.
But if you’re talking to developers, I implore you to concretely define a Progressive Web App as the combination of HTTPS, a service worker, and a Web App Manifest.
Along the lines of John’s recent post, Henrik makes the business case for progressive web apps.
He also points out how they can be much better than native apps for controlling hardware.
They can be up and running in a fraction of the time whether or not they were already “installed” and unlike “apps” can be saved as an app on the device at the user’s discretion!
Essentially they’re really great for creating “ad hoc” experiences that can be “cold started” on a whim nearly as fast as if it were already installed.
Manifest files can have categories now. Time to update those JSON files.
A fantastic piece by Aaron who—once again—articulates what I’ve been thinking:
Your site—every site—should be a PWA.
He clearly explains the building blocks of progressive web apps—HTTPS, a manifest file, and a service worker—before describing different scenarios for different kinds of sites:
Progressive Web Apps may seem overly technical or beyond the needs of your project, but they’re really not. They’re just a shorthand for quality web experiences—experiences that can absolutely make a difference in our users’ lives.
Highly recommended!
Deb Chachra:
If research on biases has told us anything, it is that humans make better decisions when we learn to recognize and correct for bias.
Cynthia Lee didn’t write the clickbaity headline, but she did write the superb article that follows it, methodically taking the manifestbro apart:
Its quasi-professional tone is a big part of what makes it so beguiling (to some) and also so dangerous. Many defenders seem genuinely baffled that a document that works so hard to appear dispassionate and reasonable could provoke such an emotional response.
This is what I was trying to get at with my post, but here it is explained far more clearly, calmly, and rationally.
In the end, focusing the conversation on the minutiae of the scientific claims in the manifesto is a red herring. Regardless of whether biological differences exist, there is no shortage of glaring evidence, in individual stories and in scientific studies, that women in tech experience bias and a general lack of a welcoming environment, as do underrepresented minorities. Until these problems are resolved, our focus should be on remedying that injustice.
We men face shame and firing if we say the wrong thing. Women face the same plus rape threats, death threats, and all kinds of sustained harassment. So women can’t speak up safely and therefore they would have to watch their male colleagues discuss how a woman’s brain determines her interests. How impossibly maddening that would be.
Normally a McSweeney’s piece elicits a wry chuckle, but this one had me in stitches.
Humans are also far more likely to “literally cannot right now.” I have never met an automaton that literally could not, though I have met some that theoretically would not and hypothetically might want to stop.