PWAs in 2021 - An update to the platform
Hi! 👋
Since the last newsletter, I have many things to share with you around PWAs
🎥 Publishing PWAs, a new video course
📈 Chromium continues the evolution of the PWA platform
🍎 Apple acknowledges that PWAs exist, iOS 14.5 is coming with a new Safari version
🆕 State of the PWA platform and a 2021 Cheat Sheet [video]
In the past few months, I've delivered several PWA workshops for companies, and in public events such as Chrome Developer Summit. I've also published new articles and video courses and sessions.
Here you have a summary of the most important updates you should know ⬇️
If you want to support my work, you can Buy Me Coffee account, or donate through PayPal
Publishing PWAs, a new course at Pluralsight
In this course, Publishing Progressive Web Apps, you’ll learn to distribute your PWAs out of the manual installation from the browser without losing the advantages of the web platform.
First, you’ll explore compatible app stores and enterprise distribution, and how to make a publishing plan. Next, you’ll discover Trusted Web Activities for Android and Google Play Store distribution with BubbleWrap and PWABuilder. Finally, you’ll learn how to create distribution packages for AppStore for iOS and iPadOS with AppBoundDomains and WKWebView, as well as for Windows using the Microsoft Store.
Get info about the course (free trial available)
Chromium continues the evolution of PWAs
Google Chrome and other Chromium-browsers (such as Edge and Samsung Internet) have been evolving the PWA platform a lot lately thanks to new Fugu project capabilities. This is a list of some of the most important changes that have been published in the stable channel in the past 6 months:
🗃 File System Access (desktop-only)
👜 Change for TWAs: new requirements for quality criteria and error management
📷 Camera Pan, Tilt and Zoom (PTZ) API
🕵️ Display Override: a way to specify more than one display value in the manifest
👜 Digital Goods API: access Play Billing from TWAs
🔄 WebShare and WebShare target (Windows and ChromeOS support)
🔌 Web Serial (Desktop-only)
🏷 WebNFC (Android-only)
🎹 Web HID (Desktop-only)
🖥 New "Install" badge on desktop, and "Install" menu item on Android
🎥 AV1 Encoder (Desktop-only)
💡WebXR Light Estimation (Android-only)
These changes are confirmed on Chrome up to version 90; Edge and other Chromium-based browsers support may be different.
More interesting things are coming in the upcoming months, including:
A new installation dialog experience for Android (more info)
Windows Control Overlay for desktop PWA (more info)
See a complete list of changes in Chrome for PWAs
Updates on Apple and PWAs
Apple and PWA's relationship is weird; we all know that. There are more insights in my PWAs in 2021 article (mentioned below), but I want to emphasize here two things:
Apple acknowledges PWAs exist
If you follow my work, you know I always talk about PWAs and Apple. Apple never accepted the existence of something with the name PWA; until now. But it didn't happen as we were expecting. Apple's lawyers defined PWAs and their compatibility on iOS and iPadOS as evidence against App Store monopoly to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) (see full PDF document).
WWDC will happen in just a few weeks. Will we see Apple talking about PWAs for the first time in public?
New Safari version in iOS 14.5
iOS 14.5 is now in Release Candidate and I've been playing with it before the final launch next week. While it's a small iOS version update, it includes a new Safari version (14.1) which means it has more updates than other smaller versions we've seen since iOS 14 was launched last year.
I will publish the article next week, but as a teaser:
Nothing that you are expecting from iOS is actually there 😜 (99.9% accuracy)
No Web Push, no better installation experience, no better SW debug tools
Old bugs (that I also reported before) are back for PWAs 😡 (no white status bar available, the Done button in the In-app browser is inconsistent)
Some new bugs on Service Workers and installed PWAs seems to be present avoiding some installed PWAs to load when offline 😒
There are new capabilities APIs! 👏 (some of them under a -disabled by default- flag)
Web Share level 2 (let us share files)
Contact Picker API
Speech Recognition
Paint Timing
A new <model> HTML tag (for 3D / AR models), early experiment
Good news for Web Views: TouchID and FaceID and getUserMedia support 😀
Stay tuned for final details next week!
PWAs in 2021
"The Year of PWA" has already passed, and sometimes we, the Web community, think PWAs are bigger than the reality. I created a long post covering where we are in the Progressive Web App field, what's new from one year ago and what to expect for the rest of the year in the platform. It includes some data about the market share and its comparison with the app store world.
Read the article
Also, last week, I delivered a new talk: "PWA Cheat Sheet 2021" covering some of the previous article's data and 6 tips that you should be implementing when publishing a PWA this year. Most of the things I mentioned in that video are practices that most PWAs are ignoring creating a bad user experience. It includes a not so well-known trick to increase the PWA installation reliability on iOS.
Watch the video
If you want to support my work, you can Buy Me Coffee account, or donate through PayPal
See you next time! Stay safe 😷!