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Bruce Lawson's personal site

Progressive Apps and bikeshedding with Alex Russell

In the corridor track at Velocity Conference, Santa Clara, I had a natter with international glamourpuss Alex Russell about Installable Web Apps/ HTML Manifest and Opera’s forthcoming implementation on Android. Alex has elegantly written his thoughts down in Progressive Apps: Escaping Tabs Without Losing Our Soul. Go and read it, because he’s absolutely right, except for one thing.

The name. He was so close:

Frances called them “Progressive Open Web Apps” and we both came around to just “Progressive Apps”. They existed before, but now they have a name.

“Progressive Open Web Apps” makes the satisfying acronym “POWA”. Enthused and infused with the mightiness of HTML App Manifest, Add to Homescreen and Web App Install banners, I went to the Marvel comics’ Superhero generator and gave them a mascot for the collective pusissance. Meet…The POWA-arranger:

POWA arranger

I jest, of course. Doesn’t matter to me what they’re called. A good user experience, and all the power of URLs and the Web is what matters to me. As Alex writes

Building immersive apps using web technology no longer requires giving up the web itself.

Stay tuned for an announcement about this functionality in Opera for Android. Product Manager Andreas Bovens will be leading a breakout session about installable web apps at Edge Conference London on 27th July. I’ll be there too, to straighten his tie, warm his microphone and shake my pom-poms.

Whether or not you’ll attend in person (it’ll be streamed and recorded) feel free to add questions or discussion points.

Buy "Calling For The Moon", my debut album of songs I wrote while living in Thailand, India, Turkey. (Only £2, on Bandcamp.)

4 Responses to “ Progressive Apps and bikeshedding with Alex Russell ”

Comment by Charlie

I assume some 1970s prog rock theme tune is compulsory? C’mon Bruce how about a tune to accompany the prog apps? 😉

Comment by Bruce

@ben

will do, when it’s ready. (We didn’t inherit that code from Chromium because it lives in one of the layers that we choose to implement ourselves to give us more flexibility and differentiation).

Soon, though!

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