How about those progressive web apps?

I've not started working in this space yet. But it is looking like this is our future. Thoughts?

Comments

[rhymes]

I don't remember how to embed posts (@ben ? :D) but these dev.to contributions contain interesting information about the future of PWA:

• Will desktop #PWAs kill hybrid wrappers like electronjs?
• Will Progressive Web Apps overcome Native?
• Safari now supports Service Workers: What this means (to me at least)

I'm not an expert on PWA at all so I'm sticking to giving you pointers to comments of people who know better ™ ;-)

My only worry about PWA is that they seem very Chrome centric for now (especially because Google is the company that pushes them more) but as the third link says Safari is almost there. Chrome and Safari make the majority of browser usage nowadays so that's a good start :-)

[Ben Halpern]

Even though I'm getting more into this space, I still basically think this:

What the heck is a "Progressive Web App"? Seriously.

Ben Halpern

#webdev

Oh, and this is how to embed posts:

{% link https://dev.to/ben/what-the-heck-is-a-progressive-web-app-seriously-923 %}

It says "link", because eventually that will be the interface for sharing any web link richly 🙂

[rhymes]

Thanks!

[Meghan (she/her)]

I've made some comments in the posts you mentioned, they're all great reads. On your point about them being a little Chrome-centric. I agree and disagree. The idea is for all browsers of all kinds on all platforms so that developers that are willing to put in the effort can finally have a write-once/run-everywhere dynamic with the code they write. However, Chrome is the most fully-featured when it comes to a lot of the things most devs would want. I haven't really publicized this much because they don't have Service Worker's *quite yet* but on my website I make a bunch of common use utility PWAs at apps.nektro.net. They're all on GitHub and the reason I bring it up is because in the venture of making those apps and plenty more I plan to make in the future for that project I have come across some browser incompatibilities that make making really good PWAs hard on anything other than Chrome. Now, this isn't to discount any of the work that the other browsers have done. They've done absolutely fantastic work. But, when browser A doesn't have this API and browser B doesn't have that API it leaves Chrome as the only browser with everything.

I keep a running list of some of the common gotcha's that I've run into on the repo but I can list some of them here:

• Custom Elements not supported in Edge
• IndexedDB not supported in Edge
• ES6 Modules not supported in Firefox
• Lots not supported in Safari private mode

I believe PWAs are the future, and we're sooo close!

[rhymes]

I starred your repo, I'll definitely take a look when I get to implement a first PWA.

I agree, the work they've done is so important but I think the companies driving the development need to believe in them a little bit more :-)

Crossing fingers