Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

Comments for Progressive Web Apps: Escaping Tabs Without Losing Our Soul

Love this. I didn't realize how much of this was in place. Not until I saw the screenshot with the caption of the the pinned app taking full screen I thought this was a futuristic vision of how should this work. But After trying this on Medium.com on Android, it's actually pretty cool.

I didn't quite get the part where client-side technologies that are able to render on the server provide an advantage for this model? I would love to hear more about this and what frameworks/technologies you think is starting to address that?

@geddski @bruce this is also changing in Android M where permissions will be asked only when needed and not on install all at once. I think this is overall a good step, it might add a bit of friction the first time the permission triggers but it also removes a friction on first time use of the whole app and gives you a chance to explain why you need this permission better.
+1 this is an excellent way forward. I like this much better than browsers asking me to install the native app on every visit.

One thing I think we'll need is a way for the app to ask the user for all the permissions it needs at once, similar to an app install.

Mobile browsers also need to become a higher priority for the vendors, Apple especially. Each installed app needs dedicated resources and protection from the constant crashing that people experience currently. Oh and most importantly the browser needs to never refresh the page when coming back to the app, unless the user explicitly hits refresh. Today it's like "hey just a quick little white flash to remind you this is just a website". Perhaps this is another issue that service workers can help with. In which case the app should refresh every time it's opened.

p.s. there's a typo in "code-based".

by geddski at
Love this, and that Android experience of pinning and reopening looks great! We have the pinning side of it in Windows Phone, but it would be nice if the page then opened as a "top-level, full-screen" app. P.S. How did you make the GIF?
Seems similar to what Mozilla is doing with Firefox OS and web/apps there.

geddski: Fixed! Thank you.

Stephen: that was all Paul Kinlan. Original post here.

Rudolf: FF is working on the missing bits of their Progressive App story, e.g. Service Workers. What they chose to do about prompting or in some other way promoting these sites as being "appy" will be totally up to them. Can't wait to see what they decide to do, but regardless, sites built in a Progressive way will deliver a great experience on FF regardless.

by alex at
@Geddski said "One thing I think we’ll need is a way for the app to ask the user for all the permissions it needs at once, similar to an app install."

I've been thinking a lot about this (I'm on of the team working on this at Opera) and wondering about permissions.

I'm no lover of Apple, but I find the iOS way of asking for permissions when they're required rather than up-front to be generally better and, crucially, more Web-like, I can use some parts of an app and not the bits that require elevated permissions that way.

Feels more 'progressive enhancement" this way.

by bruce at

Nothing about the model I'm presenting here has any impact on permissions. Chrome's implementation makes all permission runtime-requested.

One of the things we've played with in the future is the ability to list some set of optional permissions in the manifest which might be present the user with UI at "keep" time. We haven't done it yet, but it will always be a shortcut for the runtime requests, not a way to do non-optional permissions. Users can always revoke them; the web's good that way.

by alex at
Great article Alex! Minor error: the link on "Manifests" points to http://fberriman.com :)
by Thomas at

Thomas: thanks, and fixed!

by alex at
just a typo: avocate, in your bio
by just a typo at
"I’m no lover of Apple, but I find the iOS way of asking for permissions when they’re required rather than up-front to be generally better and, crucially, more Web-like, I can use some parts of an app and not the bits that require elevated permissions that way."

100% agreed. I'm ok to give an "app" permission as and when I require it's functionality.

If anything, I'd prefer to determine when those permissions expire. Something like this:

Grant permission for Facebook to:

[x] access your camera [x] determine your location

[ ] 1 Year [ ] 1 Month [ ] Today [x] This session

[Cancel] [Grant now]

Great article, by the way!