[Progressive web apps: the long game](https://remysharp.com/2016/03/18/progressive-web-apps-the-long-game "Permanent Link: Progressive web apps: the long game")

The first was Jake Archibald’s service worker talk. I’ve seen Jake talk about service workers many times in the past (here’s a [short one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uQMl7mFB6g) if you haven’t), but this time he went on to compare the load time using service worker compared to without.

I’m spoiling the inevitable reveal from his talk, but he goes on to show a service worker driven page will load almost instantly in an online connection (and in fact complete rendering first), offline and importantly in the "lie-fi" mode (when a device thinks it has a connection).

What’s stood out for me was how a relatively small amount of JavaScript and some well considered code can truly create an offline first experience that doesn’t just rival it’s native counterparts, but IMHO stands head and shoulders above. The load time was instant, for a web app, driven by regular HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It was fast, and all worked irrespective of the connectivity.

This screenshot I took of Instagram is still a relatively recent memory for me. A native app loading over lie-fi:


Jake demoed the potential that we have as web developers to make sure this never happens on the web.

Paul Kinlan spent a brief 15 minutes talk through the add to home screen feature that’s new in Chrome. He touched on some of the history, coming from Apple’s old meta tags that tried to inform Safari how to render the page, and showed how Chrome’s old process was convoluted.

The home screen feature is controlled through a [manifest.json](/manifest.json) (mine) file but can’t be accessed unless a few prerequisites are in place.

Those prerequisites are:

Paul also talked about the next steps:


Initially when I learnt about the add to home screen feature, I was frustrated that I needed to have a service worker. It seemed like another hoop to jump through (after adding HTTPS). This wasn’t the case. Paul, in not so many words, explained the long game:

This is huge. Today, I don’t even bother trying to visit sites offline. I know there’s a browser cache, but I don’t trust it’ll load. If I know there’s a poor connection, I could open the URL hoping, praying that it might load before I forget what I was doing. I have no trust it’ll load at all.

Now is our chance to change all this. Now we have the technologies to create a trustworthy experience with our users, that puts web apps a single touch away from our users.

Published 18-Mar 2016 under #web. [Edit this post](https://github.com/remy/remysharp.com/blob/main/public/blog/progressive-web-apps-the-long-game.md)

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Irina Baranivska

0 points

7 years ago

Hello, the topic of the conference and of your article is very significant for us, as we are working in this field and recently our team has developed one PWA called http://www.selio.com/ It would be great, if you tried it and expressed your opinion!\ Please find below a link of the presentation, where you can find more technical information:\ [http://es.slideshare.net/ju…​;](http://es.slideshare.net/julianmartinez2/building-selio-a-local-market-progressive-web-app)\ In any case I’m always in your disposal to answer any questions.\ I look forward to hearing from your feedback!


Bob Hazard

0 points

7 years ago

There is a playlist of the June 2016 talks here [https://www.youtube.com/pla…​;](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNYkxOF6rcIAWWNR_Q6eLPhsyx6VvYjVb)


Jason Brown

0 points

7 years ago

I have no idea what half of this means, but it’s succinct enough to tell me what I don’t know that I don’t know. +1


Estelle

0 points

7 years ago

Google spent half their time at Chrome Developer Summit event on progressive web apps back in November. The videos are online.

[https://www.youtube.com/pla…​;](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNYkxOF6rcICcHeQY02XLvoGL34rZFWZn)

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