Progressive Web Apps in Rails

For fun and profit

@sophiedeziel

Dear Sophie,

What is a progressive web app?

 

Sincerely, the audience

The Goal:

Create a Progressive web app following Rails conventions

Responsive

  • Bootstrap
  • Material Design Lite
  • Foundation
  • Any other CSS that is designed to be fully responsive

Connectivity Independent

  • Cache all the things!!
  • Register a service worker

That part was kinda difficult

  • The asset's pipeline and it's digested URLs

  • The service worker must be at the root

  • Workarounds to be able to use CoffeeScript or Erb can be very ugly

  • Cache data that can change often is most likely to bite you

App-like

  • Very subjective
  • Material Design Lite is app-like

Fresh

  • Be wise on cache usage
  • The asset's pipeline can help you

Safe

  • Force SSL usage in config
  • Dev mode with ngrok.io 
  • Enabled on Heroku for staging

Discoverable

  • Use the manifest
  • The service worker
  • Robots and devices can easily identify it as an app

Re-engageable

  • Value of your application + engagement features
  • Push notifications

Installable

  • The manifest and service worker
  • Icon on the home screen
  • Customization
  • Add a banner to encourage installation
  • However, as a low penetration rate

Linkable

  • If you do a single page application, keep in mind the urls
  • Rails RESTful routes for the win

Build your own

My links:

  • https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting-started/your-first-progressive-web-app/?hl=en

  • https://addyosmani.com/blog/getting-started-with-progressive-web-apps/

  • http://developer.telerik.com/featured/what-progressive-web-apps-mean-for-the-web/

  • https://aerotwist.com/blog/voice-memos/

Progressive Web Apps

By Sophie Déziel

Progressive Web Apps

I gave that talk on February 16th 2016 at Montreal.rb meetup.

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