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/