A wager on the web

Jason has written a great post about progressive web apps. It’s also a post about whether fears of the death of the web are justified.

Lately, I vacillate on whether the web is endangered or poised for a massive growth due to the web’s new capabilities. Frankly, I think there are indicators both ways.

So he applies Pascal’s wager. The hypothesis is that the web is under threat and progressive web apps are a solution to fighting that threat.

• If the hypothesis is incorrect and we don’t build progressive web apps, things continue as they are on the web (which is not great for users—they have to continue to put up with fragile, frustratingly slow sites).
• If the hypothesis is incorrect and we do build progressive web apps, users get better websites.
• If the hypothesis is correct and we do build progressive web apps, users get better websites and we save the web.
• If the hypothesis is correct and we don’t build progressive web apps, the web ends up pining for the fjords.

Whether you see the web as threatened or see Chicken Little in people’s fears and whether you like progressive web apps or feel it is a stupid Google marketing thing, we can all agree that putting energy into improving the experience for the people using our sites is always a good thing.

Jason is absolutely correct. There are literally no downsides to us creating progressive web apps. Everybody wins.

But that isn’t the question that people have been tackling lately. None of these (excellent) blog posts disagree with the conclusion that building progressive web apps as originally defined would be a great move forward for the web:

• Yet another blog about the state and future of Progressive Web App by Ada Rose Edwards
• Progressively less progressive by Andrew Betts
• Progressive web apps – let’s not repeat the errors from the beginning of responsive web design by Michael Scharnagl

The real question that comes out of those posts is whether it’s good or bad for the future of progressive web apps—and by extension, the web—to build stop-gap solutions that use some progressive web app technologies (Service Workers, for example) while failing to be progressive in other ways (only working on mobile devices, for example).

In this case, there are two competing hypotheses:

1. In the short term, it’s okay to build so-called progressive web apps that have a fragile technology stack or only work on specific devices, because over time they’ll get improved and we’ll end up with proper progressive web apps in the long term.
2. In the short term, we should build proper progressive web apps, and it’s a really bad idea to build so-called progressive web apps that have a fragile technology stack or only work on specific devices, because that encourages more people to build sub-par websites and progressive web apps become synonymous with door-slamming single-page apps in the long term.

The second hypothesis sounds pessimistic, and the first sounds optimistic. But the people arguing for the first hypothesis aren’t coming from a position of optimism. Take Christian’s post, for example, which I fundamentally disagree with:

End users deserve to have an amazing, form-factor specific experience. Let’s build those.

I think end users deserve to have an amazing experience regardless of the form-factor of their devices. Christian’s viewpoint—like Alex’s tweetstorm—is rooted in the hypothesis that the web is under threat and in danger. The conclusion that comes out of that—building mobile-only JavaScript-reliant progressive web apps is okay—is a conclusion reached through fear.

Never make any decision based on fear.

Optimizing PWAs For Different Display Modes — Smashing Magazine

There’s really good browser support for display-mode media queries and this article does a really good job of running through some of the use cases for your progressive web app.

Hack to the Future - Frontend - Matt Hobbs

Put the kettle on. This is a long one!

Matt takes a trip down memory lane and looks at all the frontend tools, technologies, and techniques that have come and gone over the years.

But this isn’t about nostalgia (although it does make you appreciate how far we’ve come). He’s looking at whether anything from the past is worth keeping today.

Studying past best practices and legacy systems is crucial for understanding the evolution of technology and making informed decisions today.

There’s only one technique that makes the cut:

After discussing countless legacy approaches and techniques best left in the past, you’ve finally arrived at a truly timeless and Incredibly important methodology.

HTML Web Components Make Progressive Enhancement And CSS Encapsulation Easier! | CSS-Tricks

Three great examples of HTML web components:

What I hope is that you now have the same sort of epiphany that I had when reading Jeremy Keith’s post: HTML Web Components are an HTML-first feature.

PodRocket - A web development podcast from LogRocket: HTML web components with Chris Ferdinandi

I somehow missed this when it came out in January but Amber just pointed me to it—an interview with Chris about HTML web components, available for your huffduffing pleasure.

jgarber623/aria-collapsible: A dependency-free Web Component that generates progressively-enhanced collapsible regions using ARIA States and Properties.

This is a really lovely little HTML web component from Jason. It does just one thing—wires up a trigger button to toggle-able content, taking care of all the ARIA for you behind the scenes.