Idea: Progressive Web App

[Nebucatnetzer]

Would it be possible to make the republik into a progressive web app? I lnow that you're working on native apps however this might be a nice middle ground? If it requires a lot of work it probably wouldn't make much sense but if it's something one could do quickly it might be an idea?

[tpreusse]

Hi @Nebucatnetzer

Thank you for the input.

Our app isn't too far away from being full-fledged PWA. What is most missing is a service worker. This could be added with the new next.js plugin next-offline. However there are endless discussion about service workers in the next.js community and its seems still unsettled to me.

On the bright side service workers are coming to iOS 11.3: https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-are-coming-to-ios-11-3-cupertino-we-have-a-problem-2ff49fd7d6ea but also bring new issues

I think we will do some experiments with service workers once next.js 5.0.1 is released (on the stable branch). Do you want to help or getting it running?

However I doubt that in 2018 a service workers can replace the a native app completely. One of the main goals of having a native app is also solving the «attack of the clones» problem that we're already suffering from. For example the gmail mobile app is especially bad—hijacking all link and keeping them in a Google controlled environment (Chrome or a Safari View Component with it's own cookie store).

Our approach to native is:

• Setup a wrapper for the website with React Native
• Ensure a consistent cookie store when using the app—as long as the consumer uses the app the «attack of the clones» problem is gone
• Try to cache with various strategies so content that once has been loaded is available offline

Let me know what you think.

[Nebucatnetzer]

I gladly help with testing, however I'm not really a JavaScript dev. so I won't be much help with implementing it.

The "attack of the clones" problem you're referring to, is it an iOS related problem? I'm not sure if I've seen that before. I must admit I'm not too familiar with the technical details around it anyway.

I had the idea because the I'm using Firefox on Android. Mozilla added the possibility to use PWAs with Firefox 58. It's quite nice to use and I thought the Republik could benefit from this since I have longer articles open for quite a while and I can imagine that it would be useful if the lived in their own window. Especially since I have often multiple tabs (20-30) open simultaneously. Just to give some background where I'm coming from with this :)