Progressive Web Apps: Stores, Chrome 85, iOS 14 beta 8 and the Apple-Epic battle
👋Here you have my latest thoughts and content on mobile and PWA development.
Advanced Progressive Web Apps 🚀
I've published this week my latest course at Pluralsight: a 2.5 hours online video course for PWA developers.
I've covered how to improve installation reliability (with some hacks for iOS and iPadOS), better update patterns, how to prioritize app store app vs. browser installation, how to understand and handle your PWA in the background, dealing with storage persistence and the latest PWA features such as Periodic Background Sync, App Shortcuts, and Badging.
Not a Pluralsight subscriber? There is a free trial available that should have enough time to watch this course. In the library, you will also find my other courses: Designing PWAs and PWA: the Big Picture.
Publishing a PWA to the App Stores 👜
Last week I delivered this new talk for the International JavaScript Conference. The video is now available where you can see why sometimes an App Store is a good idea for PWAs, how to deal with Service Workers on this situation, the App Stores compatible with the idea, how to create a PWA Launcher, and the process to publish it.
Watch the Talk (45 minutes video)
iOS and iPadOS 14 beta 8 🍎
We are getting closer to the final version of the new Apple OS for mobile devices, and there have been some updates lately for web and PWA developers. I'm keeping a draft list note with all the changes waiting for the final article that I will share with you.
Now Chrome on iOS/iPadOS can be set as a default browser.
Chrome on iOS/iPadOS now supports Service Workers (but no Chromium engine or PWA installation)
PWAs are still out of the new App Library categories browsing.
If your PWA relies on Geolocation, have in mind many changes in this side.
WebP seems finally going to be there in stable (10 years later, but hey... continue reading, now we have AVIF in Chrome)
Chrome 85 for PWAs 🅶
Chrome 85 is now in stable, bringing some news to the PWA world.
📸 AVIF image support (only available on desktop).
Check this great article from Jake Archibald on this topic
⭐️ App Shortcuts on Windows (it was wrongly announced as available in 84)
📱 getInstalledRelatedApps can now detect Microsoft Store apps on Windows
📱 getInstalledRelatedApps can now detect if your PWA was installed from the browser on Android with WebAPK (weird implementation btw, see more)
🏁 Event Timing API
👀 Content Visibility CSS style to let the browser defer rendering of below the fold content
🧪 New Experiments in Origin Trials
Portals: seamless navigation between documents for SPAs; you load a portal (similar to an iframe), and then you can make that portal become the primary document
Fetch upload streaming
🧪 New Experiments under a flag
Web Bluetooth additions: get a list of approved devices
Read more about the latest versions of Chrome and PWAs
Apple vs. Epic Battle ⚔️
The Apple App Store has been in the news lately because of the legal battle between Epic Games (and its Fortnite game) and Apple because of the 30% "tax" Apple gets from every content sold in apps. It's a long story, but what I want to add to the discussion is some history on how app stores worked in the past 17 years.
17 years? Yes. I published a mobile game 17 years ago, so I can tell you how this was at this time. When Apple arrived with the 70%-30% split, we were all more than happy. But it's also true that 2020 is a different moment, and it's probably time to review some decisions on this topic, mostly on In-App purchases exclusivity. The split when I sold my first mobile game for Nokia, Samsung, and other devices was 5%-95%. What? Yes, I was getting 5% of the income from my app in stores.
Read more about the history of App stores' revenue share
See you next time! Let's keep in touch.