Journal tags: manifest

I may have mentioned this before, but I’m a bit of a nerd for design principles. Have I shown you my equivalent of an interesting rock collection lately?

If you think about design principles for any period of time, it inevitably gets very meta very quickly. You start thinking about what makes for good design principles. In other words, you start wondering if there are design principles for design principles.

I’ve written before about how I think good design principles should encode some level of prioritisation. The classic example is the HTML design principle called the priority of consitituencies:

In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity.

It’s wonderfully practical!

I realised recently that there’s another set of design princples that put prioritisation front and centre—the Agile manifesto:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

And there’s this excellent explanation which could just as well apply to the priorty of constituencies:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Yes! That’s the spirit!

Ironically, the Agile manifesto also contains a section called principles behind the Agile manifesto which are …less good (at least they’re less good as design principles—they’re fine as hypotheses to be tested).

Agile is far from perfect. See, for example, Miriam Posner’s piece Agile and the Long Crisis of Software. But where Agile isn’t fulfilling its promise, I’d say it’s not because of its four design principles. If anything, I think the problems arise from organisations attempting to implement Agile without truly internalising the four principles.

Oh, and that’s another thing I like about the Agile manifesto as a set of design principles—the list of prioritised principles is mercifully short. Just four lines.

It’s said that the best way to learn about something is to teach it. I certainly found that to be true when I was writing the web.dev course on responsive design.

I felt fairly confident about some of the topics, but I felt somewhat out of my depth when it came to some of the newer modern additions to browsers. The last few modules in particular were unexplored areas for me, with topics like screen configurations and media features. I learned a lot about those topics by writing about them.

Best of all, I got to put my new-found knowledge to use! Here’s how…

The Session is a progressive web app. If you add it to the home screen of your mobile device, then when you launch the site by tapping on its icon, it behaves just like a native app.

In the web app manifest file for The Session, the display-mode property is set to “standalone.” That means it will launch without any browser chrome: no address bar and no back button. It’s up to me to provide the functionality that the browser usually takes care of.

So I added a back button in the navigation interface. It only appears on small screens.

Do you see the assumption I made?

I figured that the back button was most necessary in the situation where the site had been added to the home screen. That only happens on mobile devices, right?

Nope. If you’re using Chrome or Edge on a desktop device, you will be actively encourged to “install” The Session. If you do that, then just as on mobile, the site will behave like a standalone native app and launch without any browser chrome.

So desktop users who install the progressive web app don’t get any back button (because in my CSS I declare that the back button in the interface should only appear on small screens).

I was alerted to this issue on The Session:

It downloaded for me but there’s a bug, Jeremy - there doesn’t seem to be a way to go back.

Luckily, this happened as I was writing the module on media features. I knew exactly how to solve this problem because now I knew about the existence of the display-mode media feature. It allows you to write media queries that match the possible values of display-mode in a web app manifest:

.goback {
  display: none;
}
@media (display-mode: standalone) {
  .goback {
    display: inline;
  }
}

Now the back button shows up if you “install” The Session, regardless of whether that’s on mobile or desktop.

Previously I made the mistake of inferring whether or not to show the back button based on screen size. But the display-mode media feature allowed me to test the actual condition I cared about: is this user navigating in standalone mode?

If I hadn’t been writing about media features, I don’t think I would’ve been able to solve the problem. It’s a really good feeling when you’ve just learned something new, and then you immediately find exactly the right use case for it!

I think I’ve found some more strange service worker behaviour in Chrome.

It all started when I was checking out the very nice new redesign of WebPageTest. I figured while I was there, I’d run some of my sites through it. I passed in a URL from The Session. When the test finished, I noticed that the “screenshot” tab said that something was being logged to the console. That’s odd! And the file doing the logging was the service worker script.

I fired up Chrome (which isn’t my usual browser), and started navigating around The Session with dev tools open to see what appeared in the console. Sure enough, there was a failed fetch attempt being logged. The only time my service worker script logs anything is in the catch clause of fetching pages from the network. So Chrome was trying to fetch a web page, failing, and logging this error:

The service worker navigation preload request failed with a network error.

But all my pages were loading just fine. So where was the error coming from?

After a lot of spelunking and debugging, I think I’ve figured out what’s happening…

First of all, I’m making use of navigation preloads in my service worker. That’s all fine.

Secondly, the website is a progressive web app. It has a manifest file that specifies some metadata, including start_url. If someone adds the site to their home screen, this is the URL that will open.

Thirdly, Google recently announced that they’re tightening up the criteria for displaying install prompts for progressive web apps. If there’s no network connection, the site still needs to return a 200 OK response: either a cached copy of the URL or a custom offline page.

So here’s what I think is happening. When I navigate to a page on the site in Chrome, the service worker handles the navigation just fine. It also parses the manifest file I’ve linked to and checks to see if that start URL would load if there were no network connection. And that’s when the error gets logged.

I only noticed this behaviour because I had specified a query string on my start URL in the manifest file. Instead of a start_url value of /, I’ve set a start_url value of /?homescreen. And when the error shows up in the console, the URL being fetched is /?homescreen.

Crucially, I’m not seeing a warning in the console saying “Site cannot be installed: Page does not work offline.” So I think this is all fine. If I were actually offline, there would indeed be an error logged to the console and that start_url request would respond with my custom offline page. It’s just a bit confusing that the error is being logged when I’m online.

I thought I’d share this just in case anyone else is logging errors to the console in the catch clause of fetches and is seeing an error even when everything appears to be working fine. I think there’s nothing to worry about.

Update: Jake confirmed my diagnosis and agreed that the error is a bit confusing. The good news is that it’s changing. In Chrome Canary the error message has already been updated to:

DOMException: The service worker navigation preload request failed due to a network error. This may have been an actual network error, or caused by the browser simulating offline to see if the page works offline: see https://w3c.github.io/manifest/#installability-signals

Much better!

I got an email a little while back from Michael at Repeater Books asking me if I wanted an advance copy of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism by Wendy Liu. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I said “Sure!”

I’m happy to say that the book is most excellent …or at least mostly excellent.

Contrary to what the book title—or its blurb—might tell you, this is a memoir first and foremost. It’s a terrific memoir. It’s utterly absorbing.

Just as the most personal songs can have the most universal appeal, this story feels deeply personal while being entirely accessible. You don’t have to be a computer nerd to sympathise with the struggles of a twenty-something in a start-up trying to make sense of the world. This well-crafted narrative will resonate with any human. It calls to mind Ellen Ullman’s excellent memoir, Close to the Machine—not a comparison I make lightly.

But as you might have gathered from the book’s title, Abolish Silicon Valley isn’t being marketed as a memoir:

Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo.

It’s true that the book finishes with a political manifesto but that’s only in the final chapter or two. The majority of the book is the personal story, and just as well. Those last few chapters really don’t work in this setting. They feel tonally out of place.

Don’t get me wrong, the contents of those final chapters are right up my alley—they’re preaching to the converted here. But I think they would be better placed in their own publication. The heavily-researched academic style jars with the preceeding personal narrative.

Abolish Silicon Valley is 80% memoir and 20% manifesto. I worry that the marketing isn’t making that clear. It would be a shame if this great book didn’t find its audience.

The book will be released on April 14th. It’s available to pre-order now. I highly recommend doing just that. I think you’ll really enjoy it. But if you get mired down in the final few chapters, know that you can safely skip them.

There’s an interesting thread on Github about the tongue-twistingly named beforeinstallpromt JavaScript event.

Let me back up…

Progressive web apps. You know what they are, right? They’re websites that have taken their vitamins. Specifically, they’re responsive websites that:

1. are served over HTTPS,
2. have a web app manifest, and
3. have a service worker handling the offline scenario.

The web app manifest—a JSON file of metadata—is particularly useful for describing how your site should behave if someone adds it to their home screen. You can specify what icon should be used. You can specify whether the site should launch in a browser or as a standalone app (practically indistinguishable from a native app). You can specify which URL on the site should be used as the starting point when the site is launched from the home screen.

So progressive web apps work just fine when you visit them in a browser, but they really shine when you add them to your home screen. It seems like pretty much everyone is in agreement that adding a progressive web app to your home screen shouldn’t be an onerous task. But how does the browser let the user know that it might be a good idea to “install” the web site they’re looking at?

The Samsung Internet browser does ambient badging—a + symbol shows up to indicate that a website can be installed. This is a great approach!

I hope that Chrome on Android will also use ambient badging at some point. To start with though, Chrome notified users that a site was installable by popping up a notification at the bottom of the screen. I think these might be called “toasts”.

Needless to say, the toast notification wasn’t very effective. That’s because we web designers and developers have spent years teaching people to immediately dismiss those notifications without even reading them. Accept our cookies! Sign up to our newsletter! Install our native app! Just about anything that’s user-hostile gets put in a notification (either a toast or an overlay) and shoved straight in the user’s face before they’ve even had time to start reading the content they came for in the first place. Users will then either:

1. turn around and leave, or
2. use muscle memory reach for that X in the corner of the notification.

A tiny fraction of users might actually click on the call to action, possibly by mistake.

Chrome didn’t abandon the toast notification for progressive web apps, but it did change when they would appear. Rather than the browser deciding when to show the prompt—usually when the user has just arrived on the site—a new JavaScript event called beforeinstallprompt can be used.

It’s a bit weird though. You have to “capture” the event that fires when the prompt would have normally been shown, subdue it, hold on to that event, and then re-release it when you think it should be shown (like when the user has completed a transaction, for example, and having your site on the home screen would genuinely be useful). That’s a lot of hoops. Here’s the code I use on The Session to only show the installation prompt to users who are logged in.

The end result is that the user is still shown a toast notification, but at least this time it’s the site owner who has decided when it will be shown. The Chrome team call this notification “the mini-info bar”, and Pete acknowledges that it’s not ideal:

The mini-infobar is an interim experience for Chrome on Android as we work towards creating a consistent experience across all platforms that includes an install button into the omnibox.

I think “an install button in the omnibox” means ambient badging in the browser interface, which would be great!

Anyway, back to that thread on Github. Basically, neither Apple nor Mozilla are going to implement the beforeinstallprompt event (well, technically Mozilla have implemented it but they’re not going to ship it). That’s fair enough. It’s an interim solution that’s not ideal for all reasons I’ve already covered.

But there’s a lot of pushback. Even if the details of beforeinstallprompt are troublesome, surely there should be some way for site owners to let users know that can—or should—install a progressive web app? As a site owner, I have a lot of sympathy for that viewpoint. But I also understand the security and usability issues that can arise from bad actors abusing this mechanism.

Still, I have to hand it to Chrome: even if we put the beforeinstallprompt event to one side, the browser still has a mechanism for letting users know that a progressive web app can be installed—the mini info bar. It’s not a great mechanism, but it’s better than nothing. Nothing is precisely what Firefox and Safari currently offer (though Firefox is experimenting with something).

In the case of Safari, not only do they not provide a mechanism for letting the user know that a site can be installed, but since the last iOS update, they’ve buried the “add to home screen” option even deeper in the “sharing sheet” (the list of options that comes up when you press the incomprehensible rectangle-with-arrow-emerging-from-it icon). You now have to scroll below the fold just to find the “add to home screen” option.

So while I totally get the misgivings about beforeinstallprompt, I feel that a constructive alternative wouldn’t go amiss.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Except… there’s another interesting angle to that Github thread. There’s talk of allowing sites that are launched from the home screen to have access to more features than a site inside a web browser. Usually permissions on the web are explicitly granted or denied on a case-by-case basis: geolocation; notifications; camera access, etc. I think this is the first time I’ve heard of one action—adding to the home screen—being used as a proxy for implicitly granting more access. Very interesting. Although that idea seems to be roundly rejected here:

A key argument for using installation in this manner is that some APIs are simply so powerful that the drive-by web should not be able to ask for them. However, this document takes the position that installation alone as a restriction is undesirable.

Then again:

I understand that Chromium or Google may hold such a position but Apple’s WebKit team may not necessarily agree with such a position.

I gave a quick talk at the Delta V conference in London last week called Any Site can be a Progressive Web App. I had ten minutes, but frankly I only needed enough time to say the title of the talk because, well, that was also the message.

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.

See how I define a progressive web app as being HTTPS + service worker + web app manifest? I’ve been doing that for a while. Here’s a post from last year called Progressing the web:

Literally any website can be a progressive web app:

• switch over to HTTPS,
• add a JSON manifest file with your metacrap, and
• add a service worker.

That last step can be tricky if you’re new to service workers, but it’s not unsurmountable. It’s certainly a lot easier than completely rearchitecting your existing website to be a JavaScript-driven single page app.

Later I wrote a post called What is a Progressive Web App? where I compared the definition to responsive web design.

Regardless of the specifics of the name, what I like about Progressive Web Apps is that they have a clear definition. It reminds me of Responsive Web Design. Whatever you think of that name, it comes with a clear list of requirements:

1. A fluid layout,
2. Fluid images, and
3. Media queries.

Likewise, Progressive Web Apps consist of:

1. HTTPS,
2. A service worker, and
3. A Web App Manifest.

There’s more you can do in addition to that (just as there’s plenty more you can do on a responsive site), but the core definition is nice and clear.

But here’s the thing. Outside of the confines of my own website, it’s hard to find that definition anywhere.

On Google’s developer site, their definition uses adjectives like “reliable”, “fast”, and “engaging”. Those are all great adjectives, but more useful to a salesperson than a developer.

Over on the Mozilla Developer Network, their section on progressive web apps states:

Progressive web apps use modern web APIs along with traditional progressive enhancement strategy to create cross-platform web applications. These apps work everywhere and provide several features that give them the same user experience advantages as native apps. 

Hmm …I’m not so sure about that comparison to native apps (and I’m a little disturbed that the URL structure is /Apps/Progressive). So let’s click through to the introduction:

PWAs are web apps developed using a number of specific technologies and standard patterns to allow them to take advantage of both web and native app features.

Okay. Specific technologies. That’s good to hear. But instead of then listing those specific technologies, we’re given another list of adjectives (discoverable, installable, linkable, etc.). Again, like Google’s chosen adjectives, they’re very nice and desirable, but not exactly useful to someone who wants to get started making a progressive web app. That’s why I like to cut to the chase and say:

• You need to be running on HTTPS,
• Then you can add a service worker,
• And don’t forget to add a web app manifest file.

If you do that, you’ve got a progressive web app. Now, to be fair, there’a lot that I’m leaving out. Your site should be fast. Your site should be responsive (it is, after all, on the web). There’s not much point mucking about with service workers if you haven’t sorted out the basics first. But those three things—HTTPS + service worker + web app manifest—are specifically what distinguishes a progressive web app. You can—and should—have a reliable, fast, engaging website before turning it into a progressive web app.

Jason has been thinking about progressive web apps a lot lately (he should write a book or something), and he said to me:

I agree with you on the three things that comprise a PWA, but as far as I can tell, you’re the first to declare it as such.

I was quite surprised by that. I always assumed that I was repeating the three ingredients of a progressive web app, not defining them. But looking through all the docs out there, Jason might be right. It’s surprising because I assumed it was obvious why those three things comprise a progressive web app—it’s because they’re testable.

Lighthouse, PWA Builder, Sonarwhal and other tools that evaluate your site will measure its progressive web app score based on the three defining factors (HTTPS, service worker, web app manifest). Then there’s Android’s Add to Home Screen prompt. Here finally we get a concrete description of what your site needs to do to pass muster:

• Includes a web app manifest…
• Served over HTTPS (required for service workers)
• Has registered a service worker with a fetch event handler

(Although, as of this month, Chrome will no longer show the prompt automatically—you also have to write some JavaScript to handle the beforeinstallprompt  event).

Anyway, if you’re looking to turn your website into a progressive web app, here’s what you need to do (assuming it’s already performant and responsive):

1. Switch over to HTTPS. Certbot can help you here.
2. Add a web app manifest.
3. Add a service worker to your site so that it responds even when there’s no network connection.

That last step might sound like an intimidating prospect, but help is at hand: I wrote Going Offline for exactly this situation.

It seems like any new field goes through an inevitable growth spurt that involves “defining the damn thing.” For the first few years of the IA Summit, every second presentation seemed to be about defining what Information Architecture actually is. See also: UX. See also: Content Strategy.

Now it seems to be happening with Progressive Web Apps …which is odd, considering the damn thing is defined damn well.

I’ve written before about the naming of Progressive Web Apps. On the whole, I think it’s a pretty good term, especially if you’re trying to convince the marketing team.

Regardless of the specifics of the name, what I like about Progressive Web Apps is that they have a clear definition. It reminds me of Responsive Web Design. Whatever you think of that name, it comes with a clear list of requirements:

1. A fluid layout,
2. Fluid images, and
3. Media queries.

Likewise, Progressive Web Apps consist of:

1. HTTPS,
2. A service worker, and
3. A Web App Manifest.

There’s more you can do in addition to that (just as there’s plenty more you can do on a responsive site), but the core definition is nice and clear.

Except, for some reason, that clarity is being lost.

Here’s a post by Ben Halpern called What the heck is a “Progressive Web App”? Seriously.

I have a really hard time describing what a progressive web app actually is.

He points to Google’s intro to Progressive Web Apps:

Progressive Web Apps are user experiences that have the reach of the web, and are:

• Reliable - Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions.
• Fast - Respond quickly to user interactions with silky smooth animations and no janky scrolling.
• Engaging - Feel like a natural app on the device, with an immersive user experience.

Those are great descriptions of the benefits of Progressive Web Apps. Perfect material for convincing your clients or your boss. But that appears on developers.google.com …surely it would be more beneficial for that audience to know the technologies that comprise Progressive Web Apps?

Ben Halpern again:

Google’s continued use of the term “quality” in describing things leaves me with a ton of confusion. It really seems like they want PWA to be a general term that doesn’t imply any particular implementation, and have it be focused around the user experience, but all I see over the web is confusion as to what they mean by these things. My website is already “engaging” and “immersive”, does that mean it’s a PWA?

I think it’s important to use the right language for the right audience.

If you’re talking to the business people, tell them about the return on investment you get from Progressive Web Apps.

If you’re talking to the marketing people, tell them about the experiential benefits of Progressive Web Apps.

But if you’re talking to developers, tell them that a Progressive Web App is a website served over HTTPS with a service worker and manifest file.

I really should know better than to 386 myself, but this manifesto from a (former) Googler has me furious.

Oh, first of all, let me just get past any inevitable whinging that I’m not bothering to refute the bullshit contained therein. In the spirit of Brandolini’s law, here are some thorough debunkings:

• Faruk has written an excellent well-reasoned riposte that also includes a valuable history lesson.
• A former Googler wrote a three point rebuttal:

  1. Despite speaking very authoritatively, the author does not appear to understand gender.
  2. Perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering.
  3. And most seriously, the author does not appear to understand the consequences of what he wrote, either for others or himself.

• Angela Saini—author of Inferior—wrote in The Guardian about the decidedly unscientific cherry-picking of data within a memo that claims to be all about the science.
• Ethar Alali published a three-part dissection of the manifesto:
  1. A narrative on the Google Anti-Diversity Manifesto
  2. Facts claimed, facts maimed
  3. Facts claimed, facts maimed (more).

Okay, with that out of the way, let me get to what really grinds my gears about this.

First off, there’s the contents of the document itself. It is reprehensible. It sets out to prove a biological link between a person’s gender and their ability to work at Google. It fails miserably, as shown in the links above, but it is cleverly presented as though it were an impartial scientific evaluation (I’m sure it’s complete coincidence that the author just happens to be a man). It begins by categorically stating that the author is all for diversity. This turns out to be as accurate as when someone starts a sentence with “I’m not a racist, but…”

The whole thing is couched in scientism that gives it a veneer of respectability. That leads me to the second thing I’m upset about, and that’s the reaction to the document.

Y’know, it’s one thing when someone’s clearly a troll. It’s easy—and sensible—to dismiss their utterances and move on. But when you see seemingly-smart people linking to the manifestbro and saying “he kind of has a point”, it’s way more infuriating. If you are one of those people (and when I say people, I mean men), you should know that you have been played.

The memo is clearly not a screed. It is calm, clear, polite, and appears perfectly reasonable. “Look,” it says, “I’m just interested in the objective facts here. I’m being reasonable, and if you’re a reasonable person, then you will give this a fair hearing.”

That’s a very appealing position. What reasonable person would reject it? And so, plenty of men who consider themselves to be reasonable and objective are linking to the document and saying it deserves consideration. Strangely, those same men aren’t considering the equally reasonable rebuttals (linked to above). That’s confirmation bias.

See? I can use terms like that to try to make myself sound smart too. Mind you, confirmation bias is not the worst logical fallacy in the memo. That would the Texas sharpshooter fallacy (which, admittedly, is somewhat related to confirmation bias). And, yes, I know that by even pointing out the logical fallacies, I run the risk of committing the fallacy fallacy. The memo is reprehensible not for the fallacies it contains, but for the viewpoint it sets out to legitimise.

The author cleverly wraps a disgusting viewpoint in layers of reasonable-sounding arguments. “Can’t we have a reasonable discussion about this? Like reasonable people? Shouldn’t we tolerate other points of view?” Those are perfectly sensible questions to ask if the discussion is about tabs vs. spaces or Star Wars vs. Star Trek. But those questions cease to be neutral if the topic under discussion is whether some human beings are genetically unsuited to coding.

This is how we get to a situation where men who don’t consider themselves to be sexist in any way—who consider themselves to be good people—end up posting about the Google memo in their workplace Slack channels as though it were a topic worthy of debate. It. Is. Not.

“A-ha!” cry the oh-so-logical and thoroughly impartial men, “If a topic cannot even be debated, you must be threatened by the truth!”

That is one possible conclusion, yes. Or—and this is what Occam’s razor would suggest—it might just be that I’m fucking sick of this. Sick to my stomach. I am done. I am done with even trying to reason with people who think that they’re the victimised guardians of truth and reason when they’re actually just threatened by the thought of a world that doesn’t give them special treatment.

I refuse to debate this. Does that make me inflexible? Yep, sure does. But, y’know, not everything is worthy of debate. When the very premise of the discussion is harmful, all appeals to impartiality ring hollow.

If you read the ex-Googler’s memo and thought “seems reasonable to me”, I hope you can see how you have been played like a violin. Your most virtuous traits—being even-handed and open-minded—have been used against you. I hope that you will try to use those same traits to readdress what has been done. If you read through the rebuttals linked to above and still think that the original memo was reasonable, I fear the damage is quite deep.

It may seem odd that a document that appears to be so reasonable is proving to be so very divisive. But it’s that very appearance of impartiality that gives it its power. It is like an optical illusion for the mind. Some people—like me—read it and think, “this is clearly wrong and harmful.” Other people—who would never self-identify as sexist in any way—read it and think, “seems legit.”

I’m almost—almost—glad that it was written. It’s bringing a lot of buried biases into the light.

By the way, if you are one of those people who still thinks that the memo was “perfectly reasonable” or “made some good points”, and we know each other, please get in touch so that I can re-evaluate our relationship.

The saddest part about all of this is that there are men being incredibly hurtful and cruel to the women they work with, without even realising what they’re doing. They may even think think they are actively doing good.

Take this tweet to Jen which was no doubt intended as a confidence boost:

I disagree with you about the memo, but I always have and continue to admire your work and your giant contributions to CSS. Thank you! ♥️

— Brandon Flynn (@btflynn) August 8, 2017

See how it is glibly passed off as though it were some slight disagreement, like which flavour of ice cream is best? “Well, we’ll agree to disagree about half the population being biologically unsuitable for this kind of work.” And then that’s followed by what is genuinely—in good faith—intended as a compliment. But the juxtaposition of the two results in the message “Hey, you’re really good …for a woman.”

That’s what I find so teeth-grindingly frustrating about all this. I don’t think that guy is a troll. If he were, I could just block and move on. He genuinely thinks he’s a good person who cares about objective truth. He has been played.

A nasty comment from a troll is bad. It’s hurtful in a blunt, shocking way. But there’s a different kind of hurt that comes from a casual, offhand, even well-meaning comment that’s cruel in a more deep-rooted way.

This casual cruelty. This insidious, creeping, never-ending miasma of sexism. It is well and truly intolerable.

This is not up for debate.

There were plenty of talks about building for the web at this year’s Google I/O event. That makes a nice change from previous years when the web barely got a look in and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Google I/O was an event for Android app developers.

This year’s event showed just how big Google is, and how it doesn’t have one party line when it comes to the web and native. At the same time as there were talks on Service Workers and performance for the web, there was also an unveiling of Android Instant Apps—a full-frontal assault on the web. If you thought it was annoying when websites door-slammed you with intrusive prompts to install their app, just wait until they don’t need to ask you anymore.

I've been "Maybe I'll go Android" for awhile but today's announcement of http:// links getting hijacked into apps got me all like Nope.

— Dave Rupert (@davatron5000) May 18, 2016

Peter has looked a bit closer at Android Instant Apps and I think he’s as puzzled as I am. Either they are sandboxed to have similar permission models to the web (in which case, why not just use the web?) or they allow more access to native APIs in which case they’re a security nightmare waiting to happen. I’m guessing it’s probably the former.

Meanwhile, a different part of Google is fighting the web’s corner. The buzzword du jour is Progressive Web Apps, originally defined by Alex as:

• Responsive
• Connectivity independent
• App-like-interactions
• Fresh
• Safe
• Discoverable
• Re-engageable
• Installable
• Linkable

A lot of those points are shared by good native apps, but the first and last points in that list are key features of the web: being responsive and linkable.

Alas many of the current examples of so-called Progressive Web Apps are anything but. Flipkart and The Washington Post have made Progressive Web Apps that are getting lots of good press from Google, but are mobile-only.

Looking at most of the examples of Progressive Web Apps, there’s an even more worrying trend than the return to m-dot subdomains. It looks like most of them are concentrating so hard on the “app” part that they’re forgetting about the “web” bit. That means they’re assuming that modern JavaScript is available everywhere.

Alex pointed to shop.polymer-project.org as an example of a Progressive Web App that is responsive as well as being performant and resilient to network failures. It also requires JavaScript (specifically the Polymer polyfill for web components) to render some text and images in a browser. If you’re using the “wrong” browser—like, say, Opera Mini—you get nothing. That’s not progressive. That’s the opposite of progressive. The end result may feel very “app-like” if you’re using an approved browser, but throwing the users of other web browsers under the bus is the very antithesis of what makes the web great. What does it profit a website to gain app-like features if it loses its soul?

I’m getting very concerned that the success criterion for Progressive Web Apps is changing from “best practices on the web” to “feels like native.” That certainly seems to be how many of the current crop of Progressive Web Apps are approaching the architecture of their sites. I think that’s why the app-shell model is the one that so many people are settling on.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the app-shell model. I feel that it prioritises exactly the wrong stuff—the interface is rendered quickly while the content has to wait. It feels weirdly like a hangover from Appcache. I also notice it being used as a get-out-of-jail-free card, much like the ol’ “Single Page App” descriptor; “Ah, I can’t do progressive enhancement because I’m building an app shell/SPA, you see.”

But whatever. That’s just, like, my opinion, man. Other people can build their app-shelled SPAs and meanwhile I’m free to build websites that work everywhere, and still get to use all the great technologies that power Progressive Web Apps. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been quite excited about them—all the technologies and methodologies they promote match perfectly with my progressive enhancement approach: responsive design, Service Workers, good performance, and all that good stuff.

I hope we’ll see more examples of Progressive Web Apps that don’t require JavaScript to render content, and don’t throw away responsiveness in favour of a return to device-specific silos. But I’m not holding my breath. People seem to be so caught up in the attempt to get native-like functionality that they’re willing to give up the very things that make the web great.

For example, I’ve seen people use a meta viewport declaration to disable pinch-zooming on their sites. As justification they point to the fact that you can’t pinch-zoom in most native apps, therefore this web-based app should also prohibit that action. The inability to pinch-zoom in native apps is a bug. By also removing that functionality from web products, people are reproducing unnecessary bugs. It feels like a cargo-cult approach to building for the web: slavishly copy whatever native is doing …because everyone knows that native apps are superior to websites, right?

Here’s another example of the cargo-cult imitation of native. In your manifest JSON file, you can declare a display property. You can set it to browser, standalone, or fullscreen. If you set it to standalone or fullscreen then, when the site is launched from the home screen, it won’t display the address bar. If you set the display property to browser, the address bar will be visible on launch. Now, personally I like to expose those kind of seams:

The idea of “seamlessness” as a desirable trait in what we design is one that bothers me. Technology has seams. By hiding those seams, we may think we are helping the end user, but we are also making a conscience choice to deceive them (or at least restrict what they can do).

Other people disagree. They think it makes more sense to hide the URL. They have a genuine concern that users will be confused by launching a website from the home screen in a browser (presumably because the user’s particular form of amnesia caused them to forget how that icon ended up on their home screen in the first place).

Fair enough. We’ll agree to differ. They can set their display property how they want, and I can set my display property how I want. It’s a big web after all. There’s no one right or wrong way to do this. That’s why there are multiple options for the values.

Or, at least, that was the situation until recently…

Remember when I wrote about how Chrome on Android will show an “add to home screen” prompt if your Progressive Web App fulfils a few criteria?

• It is served over HTTPS,
• it has a manifest JSON file,
• it has a Service Worker, and
• the user visits it a few times.

Well, those goalposts have moved. There is now a new criterion:

• Your manifest file must not contain a display value of browser.

Chrome developers have decided that displaying URLs is not “best practice”. It was filed as a bug.

A bug.

Displaying URLs.

A bug.

I’m somewhat flabbergasted by this. The killer feature of the web—URLs—are being treated as something undesirable because they aren’t part of native apps. That’s not a failure of the web; that’s a failure of native apps.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that everyone should be setting their display property to browser. That would be far too prescriptive. I’m saying that it should be a choice. It should depend on the website. It should depend on the expectations of the users of that particular website. To declare that all users of all websites will be confused by seeing a URL is so presumptuous and arrogant that it beggars belief.

I wouldn’t even have noticed this change of policy if it weren’t for the newly-released Lighthouse tool for testing Progressive Web Apps. The Session gets a good score but under “Best Practices” there was a red mark against the site for having display: browser. Turns out that’s the official party line from Chrome.

Just to clarify: you can have a site that has literally no HTML or turns away entire classes of devices, yet officially follows “best practices” and gets rewarded with an “add to home screen” prompt. But if you have a blazingly fast responsive site that works offline, you get nothing simply because you don’t want to hide URLs from your users:

I want people to be able to copy URLs. I want people to be able to hack URLs. I’m not ashamed of my URLs …I’m downright proud.

Stuart argues that this is a paternal decision:

The app manifest declares properties of the app, but the display property isn’t about the app; it’s about how the app’s developer wants it to be shown. Do they want to proudly declare that this app is on the web and of the web? Then they’ll add the URL bar. Do they want to conceal that this is actually a web app in order to look more like “native” apps? Then they’ll hide the URL bar.

I think there’s something to that, but digging deeper, developers and designers don’t make decisions like that in isolation. They’re generally thinking about what’s best for users. So, yes, absolutely, different apps will have different display properties, but that shouldn’t be down to the belief system of the developer; it should be down to the needs of the users …the specific needs of the specific users of that specific app. For the Chrome team to come down on one side or the other and arbitrarily declare that one decision is “correct” for every single Progressive Web App that is ever going to be built …that’s a political decision. It kinda feels like an abuse of power to me. Withholding the “add to home screen” prompt like that has a whiff of blackmail about it.

The other factors that contribute to the “add to home screen” prompt are pretty uncontroversial:

• Sites should be served over a secure connection: that’s pretty hard to argue with.
• Sites should be resilient to network outages: I don’t think anyone is going to say that’s a bad idea.
• Sites should provide some metadata in manifest file: okay, sure, it’s certainly not harmful.
• Sites should obscure their URL …whoa! That feels like a very, very different requirement, one that imposes one particular opinion onto everyone who wants to participate.

This isn’t the first time that Chrome developers have made a move against the address bar. It’s starting to grind me down.

Up until now I’ve been a big fan of Progressive Web Apps. I understood them to be combining the best of the web (responsiveness, linkability) with the best of native (installable, connectivity independent). Now I see that balance shifting towards the native end of the scale at the expense of the web’s best features. I’d love to see that balance restored with a little less emphasis on the “Apps” and a little more emphasis on the “Web.” Now that would be progressive.