PWAs could still be good
I just upgraded my Fantasy Premier League helper into a Progressive Web App (PWAPWA A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of web application that is built with progressive enhancement, rather than traditional web development techniques. PWAs are designed to be fast, reliable, and installable on a user's device.).
I haven't really touched the tech since 2017, and my main memory of them ws encountering issues with them caching code and breaking sites (which is still a risk but was also probably mainly inexperience). Looking into them 8 years later, I was surprised to see...
### 1. It's so fully featured
And the features are pretty easy to set up.
You can see everything a PWAPWA A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of web application that is built with progressive enhancement, rather than traditional web development techniques. PWAs are designed to be fast, reliable, and installable on a user's device. can do here: https://whatpwacando.today/
I've found implementing notifications the PWAPWA A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of web application that is built with progressive enhancement, rather than traditional web development techniques. PWAs are designed to be fast, reliable, and installable on a user's device. way pretty nice and the storage features are great. For instance, having offline-access to my full FPL database is great, when the official FPL doesn't work offline.
2. iPhone supports so little of it
If you go through each of those features on your mobile device, you'll probably see that most of them, especialy the cool most native feeling things, aren't supported.
Given Steve Jobs was such a PWA-believer, it's disappointing that Apple is so behind the state-of-the-art in PWAPWA A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of web application that is built with progressive enhancement, rather than traditional web development techniques. PWAs are designed to be fast, reliable, and installable on a user's device. support (though obviously Apple has plenty of reasons to fear exposing near-native app experiences without the need to go through app certification).
3. It's easy to set up in your project
If you've already done the hard part of implementing an app, the pretty boilerplated work of retrofitting your web app into a PWAPWA A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of web application that is built with progressive enhancement, rather than traditional web development techniques. PWAs are designed to be fast, reliable, and installable on a user's device. is trivial for Claude/Cursor.
...but no one knows (how) to install them
Ultimately though, very few people ever 'Add to home screen' on iPhone (or know it's an option), and even less see the 'Install app' icon in the Chrome URL bar. It's so hidden away in these UIs.
It was a nice reminder to me to see what apps I use regularly already have PWAPWA A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of web application that is built with progressive enhancement, rather than traditional web development techniques. PWAs are designed to be fast, reliable, and installable on a user's device. functionality - Vercelvercel Vercel is a cloud platform for frontend developers. It is used to deploy and host websites and web applications., youTube, and more. It can be really nice to have a dedicated window, dock presence, etc. for your go-to web sites, and remove the clutter of the browser.