Progressive Web Apps

[TonyM]

Folks,

In my internet research I stumbled upon the PWA or Progressive Web Apps, Abraham makes mention of it in Maarfapad https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/tiddlywiki/PWA%7Csort:date/tiddlywiki/t2_NJN9Rlx4/oryYtM9OBQAJ

However I have not seen much references to it in TiddlyWiki otherwise. Google and others seem to be supporting this approach and it results in device and browser independance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_applications

It seems to me that TiddlyWiki is not far from being fully compliant, and a plugin, instructions etc... to turn any tiddlywiki into a PWA 

Here is a builder https://www.pwabuilder.com

What do our hard core developer coders think?

Regards

Tony

[bimlas]

Hi TonyM!

I've heard the PWA phrase, but I didn't know what it was. Seems to be very useful area.

Whether Tiddly can be PWA, I'm not sure. According to https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/checklist

• First load fast even on 3G:
  ...verify time to interactive <10s for first visit...
  
• Site's content is indexed by Google
  
• (not sure) Pages use the History API
  For single page apps, ensure the site doesn't use fragment identifiers. For example everything after the #! in https://example.com/#!user/26601.
  

In addition, if I understand well, the "core" of PWA will not change as tw.com cannot be changed, the newly added tiddlers will be lost when the page is reloaded. In this form, it would be possible to TW as a PWA by using different savers (TiddlySpot, GitHub, etc.), but without them, it would not be possible to save the changes (as you download the single HTML and next time you open the downloaded version to continue extending your notes).

[PMario]

Hi Tony,

This is just an other idea from google to maximise profit in a WebFirst environment. ... Even if it is sometimes marketed as "offline - first".

But you are right. It should be possible for TW to meet the criteria.

-m

[LinOnetwo]

We are thinking about adding SW to TW https://github.com/linonetwo/solid-tiddlywiki-syncadaptor/issues/3 this is the first step towards PWA. When user if offline, sync adaptor can save to cache and load cached tiddler after refresh, so TW can be used offline.

I don't know whether TW core needs a SW, since TW core is self contained, it doesn't fetch additional resources.

You can use https://app-manifest.firebaseapp.com to generate manifest.json so browser will cache some assets, and don't need to download full wiki every time. For example an App Shell that renders before TW core loads.

Use chrome devtool https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/#devtools to test if it's PWA engough.

在 2019年5月9日星期四 UTC+8下午3:13:23，TonyM写道：

[TonyM]

Mario,

I understand you cynicism about Google, but I understand this is a multi-vendor standard, one that is wholly embraced by google and others. It is only because the Google reference seem the most sophisticated that I linked to it. Basically to be effective it depends on the Browser providers and mobile OS's to honor the settings, so we need support from Microsoft (Edge/IE), FireFox and Chrome to support this approach.

I have always felt that web technologies are a way to avoid the need to code to proprietary standards or depend on a vendors app store. I hope this may be one avenue to achieve this.

Regards

Tony

[TonyM]

Ps

There is discussion about being able to ensure persistent local storage to support PWAs and another critical idea is an icon that does not launch another tab in a browser for the same app/site.

Regards
Tony

[TonyM]

Further to this thread

This article https://medium.com/dailyjs/goodbye-electron-hello-desktop-pwas-f316b8f39882

and this google video https://youtu.be/NITk4kXMQDw

Most Browsers are adopting these standards.

The above Explain and promote the idea of PWAs show how if TiddlyWiki can embrace this standard it will be easy for people to obtain tiddlywiki seamlessly including any edition or instance of a wiki. This gives desktop and mobile apps with easy almost invisible install and access to a local IndexDB for persistent storage. This would simplify both the distribution and savings issues we face with tiddlywiki that offer the greatest resistance to adoption. I would expect a new era of app development on top of tiddlywiki being democratised. 

Regards

Tony