Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are one of those things that I have had a vague awareness of for a while, but if you asked me for details I probably wouldn't be able to tell you much about them. Thankfully this day was a crash course in what they can do, and why they're the new hotness.
Speakers including Chris Wilson, Pete LePage & Sam Dutton covered Service Workers, Push Notifications, Web App Manifests and HTTPS (thankfully that particular talk seemed to be preaching to the choir). Meggin Kearney stepped through a demo of a testing tool called Lighthouse, which looks very handy even beyond PWA use (side note - for a day that was all about 'progressive' things, it was a little disappointing that Meggin was the only female speaker on the day. Take a look at the Respond line-up if you'd like to see how it's done Google).
Unlike your average conference or meetup, this day also featured a practical session. Google's written a number of introductory PWA code labs, and the afternoon involved everyone working through these, with the speakers and other Google crew providing support as needed. And needed it was, as the first hurdle was the wifi crashing when everyone started checking out the projects. Once that was resolved, it was relatively smooth sailing, but it was great to have some of the Google devs there to answer any questions and reassure us that that bug we saw was a browser issue and not our fault. Soon enough we were all caching and push notifying to our heart's content.
Final speakers wrapped up the day looking at some of the new things on the horizon (Payment API is definitely one to watch). All in all, I found the roadshow worth attending - it hit that sweet spot of providing some big ideas and a peek into the future, but also demonstrating some practical things you could go and implement straight away.
If you missed the event and want to get your hands dirty, head over to the code labs and start your journey into the world of Progressive Web Apps.
Credits: Photo: Sydney Progressive Web Apps
Post by Simeon Johnson
Simeon doesn't like being pigeonholed, so has embraced the term web generalist as the best description of his working life. He's a director and founder of Sydney web agency Gency. When he's not wearing all the hats at the office, he can be found playing cello for indie-chamber band Hinterlandt.
