February 11th: The Best of Both Worlds
For a little while there, the Web was looking old. Some said it was about to die or was already dead—those claims turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
It turns out the Web is, was, and remains the robust collection of information our modern world relies on for everything from education, to business, to ensuring all our friends are up to date on what we just ate. What’s especially true for businesses is that a large and growing percentage of their customers interact with them on the web. Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) are like the web applications you know and love but faster, work offline, and more. They’re as free as the web and as fast as native.
Many of our customers are aggressively moving to this exciting new technology, which is why it’s top of mind for me in today’s newsletter. We begin this issue with a comprehensive overview by one of our engineers, Anna Brakowska, on the “PRPL” pattern for PWA development. Exciting times.
All in on PWAs? Not yet convinced enough to drink the Kool-Aid? Tell us your stories—good and bad—@GetInRhythm or here on the InRhythmU blog.
Thanks and Keep Growing,
Gunjan Doshi
CEO, InRhythm
Structuring and Serving PWAs with the PRPL Pattern
(8 min. read)
“There’s a significant gap between consumer expectations, device capabilities, and the mobile behavior of most sites.The PRPL pattern can be the solution.”
What We’re Reading Around the Web
The Case for PWAs
(14 min. read)
A List Apart
“You’re probably thinking: ‘Ok, shiny new thing, why should I care about your fancy new PWA acronym?’ Will your company, startup, or pet project actually benefit from the work of learning and implementing a new way of building applications? Jason Grigsby lays out the pros and cons and provides us with an intelligent overview chock full of facts and figures to make his case. The good news is that you have choices—PWAs aren’t as difficult as you might think, and using them might even make your company more money.”
Progressive Web Apps with React.js
(8 min. read)
Medium
“Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty: how do you go about building these PWAs? Many of our clients use React to build their applications, and that framework fits well when building PWAs. In this comprehensive 4-part series, Google’s Addy Osmani goes takes a deep-dive into the stack, all the way from a simple introduction to a point-by-point explanation of how to measure success and optimize performance. Even if you don’t plan to use React to build your PWAs this series is well worth a close study.”
6 myths of Progressive Web Apps
(8 min. read)
Medium
“With all revolutions, there will be some misinformation about what’s actually happening, what it all means, and who is in charge. There’s certainly some pushback against PWAs, not least of which by those who think we should stick with native (who tend to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about What The Web Can Do). Still, there does need to be some clearing of the air around the various promises made and futures promised w/r/t PDAs, and this article tries its best to give you the clarity you need.”
At Your Service
Service Worker
“In the end, PWAs are mostly a well thought out way of building web applications using the technology we already have, with some best practices mixed in. But there are some essential and new technologies that you’ll need to get your head around. Perhaps the most important of these are ‘Service Workers.’ If you’d like to really dig in and learn this stuff, developer advocate Jake Archibald has you covered with this curated list of resources. As Jake puts it: ‘ServiceWorker is here. Get busy with it.'”
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