Progressive Web Apps and the Open Web, July/20 update
As you can imagine, all my travels were canceled (at least 10 🤨) but I continued delivering online workshops and consulting for many companies on the mobile space. More is coming! 😀
In this edition: Designing PWAs, PWAs on iOS 14, The Web Bullying API, Chrome 84, and a message from 2013 about the Open Web.
Designing PWAs
I'm happy to announce my recent new course Designing Progressive Web Apps available at Pluralsight. Two hours of video content related to how to style and design your PWAs for mobile and desktop, including the latest techniques, formats, and APIs.
PWAs on iOS 14 - What's coming
WWDC has happened and iOS 14 is coming. While it's still in beta, for now, my analysis is preliminary and you can find it my Twitter account.
The official list of changes in Safari 14 (that you may know it's not always the full list):
－Web Extensions on macOS
－TouchID and FaceID available to websites and PWAs using the WebAuth
－WebP and HDR video support
－Picture in Picture (PiP) on iPhone for <video>
－WebShare 2.0 (file sharing)
－HTTP/3 (still and experiment)
－Improved performance at many levels
－Privacy Report
－Page Translation
I'm working on the typical article I publish when stable appears, so I will share it with you when the time comes. Some interesting Twitter threads in the meantime based on beta 2:
Also, you can check the WWDC videos related to Web and Safari for iOS and iPadOS 14
Does Apple love the Web? Hear the answer from the team
Also, it's worth hearing some members of the team chatting about Safari 14 and what they think about the Web in the changelog podcast episode 400:
The Web Bullying API
Continuing with Apple, this week I had a problem that you may or may not be aware of. It happened on Twitter and after a long time analyzing I decided to write an open letter to the Apple employees working on Safari and WebKit. There is a bigger discussion underneath and a false dichotomy: privacy (Apple) vs. features (Google), but that's for a different moment.
WARNING: It's not my typical article and it involves some finger-pointing references to some persons. Not because I believe in doing that (in fact, I was frustrated while writing it as the only way), but because I think these behaviors should not be tolerated in the web community: it's bullying. I'm not affected by it, but many people are, and I think it's time to say NO to Apple. You can ignore me as you've been doing for the past 10 years since my first post with APIs you don't document, but you can't be disrespectful with me and my work, even if you don't agree with my feedback.
What's new on Chrome 84 for Progressive Web Apps
⭐️App Shortcuts－contextual menus now available on the PWA icon for Android and desktop: it's a static list of URLs you define in the Web App Manifest
🏃♀️Better support for the Web Animation API
🚪Quieter Notifications on abuse－if a website abuses of permission dialogs, Chrome will move into a different mode to protect users from abusive notifications. More about this
☕️Wake Lock－Keep the screen awake preventing phone sleep, useful for PWAs that you can use hands-free (such as using SpeechSynthesis, camera, or other behaviors.
🔢WebOTP－only for Android, it lets the app read incoming SMSs following a specific protocol, useful to speed-up 2FA
📇Content indexing－This is the only feature that I still don't see useful. It let us register offline content that our PWA can serve while offline as a way to expose that content when the user has no connection. What I don't get is the User Experience for that, the Downloads menu 🤔
🧪New Experiments in Origin Trials
－Idle Detection
－QuicTransport
－Cookie Store to access cookies asynchronously from a Service Worker
－Raw Clipboard Access (lot of security and privacy risks are always discussed on this API)
－WebAssembly SIMD (high-performance using low-level CPU instructions available on some architectures)
Links to read more:
The Open Web message from 2013
Something sent me a reference to a project I did with Telefonica in 2013 and it took me some time but I could find it in the Internet Archive. It's interesting to see that the discussions we have today are still the same. Check my article from 2013:
The Open Web is the only solution (thanks to the Internet Archive)
See you next time! I'm preparing a lot of news for the following weeks, so be ready :)
Stay safe!
Maximiliano Firtman
mobile+web developer
www.firt.mobi @firt