KT Walrus Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 Are you actively working on adding enough PWA features to have a good user experience on iOS and Android devices? I've been playing around with Twitter's PWA on iPhone and it is almost indistinguishable from their native app (with only a few differences that I've detected). In fact, the Twitter PWA app does a better job at displaying lists of posts/users than the Invision default theme on my iPhone. It is super fast due to the caching service worker in the PWA and feels almost like a good native app should (even though Safari still has a ways to go to add the support for PWAs that Chrome on Android enjoys). I need a good mobile experience for my site and something close to Twitter's PWA would be very welcome. When will we see PWA added to ICS4? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fierce God Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 following this to see what is said lol, yes i don't fully understand, but the part about a good mobile experience is what i need to watch this for, cause that would be awesome...... question, would this take away the dire need for a app...................as in "i need to get a mobile app soon to stay in the run for members to stay active or sign ups"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KT Walrus Posted May 2, 2019 Author Share Posted May 2, 2019 On 5/1/2019 at 1:12 PM, Fierce God said: question, would this take away the dire need for a app...................as in "i need to get a mobile app soon to stay in the run for members to stay active or sign ups"? Yes. PWA is a mobile app that still runs with its own browser (so it looks like a native app). You can even place your PWA in the app store (branded for your site) to make installation easier. Currently, on iOS, you "install" PWAs by visiting a website that has a PWA and doing "Add to Home Screen" in the Sharing menu. I'm not an Android user, but I think Chrome even prompts you to "install" a site's PWA when you first browse it. If you want to try PWA on your iPhone (or Android phone), try out Twitter's PWA. Just browse to the website in Safari (or Chrome) and "Add to Home Screen". It is well done. Twitter's native app is probably based on the same PWA technologies only the native app isn't restricted in what JavaScript can do. BTW, PWAs aren't a single technology but a collection of web APIs in a browser. The apps are designed to be "progressive" in that if the browser doesn't support a particular API, the app will still work (only probably not as full featured to those using a Chrome-based browser). Safari only has partial PWA support at this point, but iOS 12.2 made some decent gains towards fuller PWA support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joel R Posted May 2, 2019 Share Posted May 2, 2019 Microsoft Edge (based on Chromium) will allow PWA websites to now appear in the top level of Windows start menus. That's pretty amazing. https://winaero.com/blog/microsoft-edge-chromium-now-installs-pwas-in-the-root-of-the-start-menu/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KT Walrus Posted May 2, 2019 Author Share Posted May 2, 2019 2 hours ago, Joel R said: Microsoft Edge (based on Chromium) will allow PWA websites to now appear in the top level of Windows start menus. That's pretty amazing. Yes. My focus is on PWA for mobile since it is critical that any website have a mobile app these days, but desktop will eventually follow because the APIs for PWA are browser APIs and not specific to the OS (mobile or desktop). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted May 2, 2019 Share Posted May 2, 2019 It is probable we will expand the PWA support in Invision Community, but that's about all I can say right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KT Walrus Posted May 2, 2019 Author Share Posted May 2, 2019 I would start by adding a Service Worker to the ICS JavaScript. This would allow for efficient caching of posts and lists of posts. In the end, ICS4 is mostly about posts and lists of posts. For my ICS4 custom apps, the posts visible to the user can be pre-fetched (like email mailbox messages) to be read offline. My apps only publish posts once a day so acting like an email app is very desirable. Sync the posts when app is online and don't use HTTP requests when browsing (except to fetch attachments and other page elements not in the cache). Next, I would work on adding "Add to Home Screen" support to help users discover the PWA app. Not much sense in providing PWA apps only for those savvy enough to install them unprompted. Maybe ICS4 already has good support in this area? Also, the ICS4 default theme needs more work to make the PWA for ICS feel like a well-designed native app. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morgin Posted June 3, 2019 Share Posted June 3, 2019 Sitting here watching the Apple Conference hoping for PWA push notifications like Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Management Matt Posted June 4, 2019 Management Share Posted June 4, 2019 Yeah, we will be working on bringing a few more nice things to PWA in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KT Walrus Posted June 16, 2019 Author Share Posted June 16, 2019 Microsoft implemented a simple website to help you turn your website into a PWA, see https://www.pwabuilder.com It looks to me to be very simple to add a Service Worker to get my community a better PWA app. No support for Push, but Push requires code on the server as well as Javascript in the PWA browser. I'll probably try to add some better PWA support for my installation if Invision takes a long time to make our communities run better for mobile users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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