The 'next great thing' may be
Progressive Web Apps (PWA). But they may have already hit a roadblock of unintended consequences.
What are PWAs?
Proposed by Google (yup, jump right on board fanbois!) a year ago they are sort of a hybrid bringing the presumed best capabilities of native apps and browser apps together. Put simply WPAs combine design concepts, technologies, and APIs to give the mobile web an app type experience. Basically there are two components: a UI 'shell' and the content; they are separated (much as HTML and CSS are) so that they load and cache and can be modified separately.
Currently mostly supported by Chrome, FireFox, Opera; partially and in development by Edge, Safari.
Note: Safari and iOS look to be a concern going forward. Google idea after all.
For those looking at the mobile web and/or apps PWAs are almost a consideration requirement so as not to be caught out if/when they take off. Know the positives and negatives, what they can and can not do where and how and when... and to have a plan in place. The web is changing and little on the web is changing as much or as fast as mobile.
I'd normally not point out prospective possibilities on the principle that the longer the majority are clueless and the further they remain behind the curve the better. However, as I mentioned in my opening, something unexpected has occurred that may have considerable impact on how PWAs function and even whether they can going forward.
A primary component are the 'service workers', a set of background scripts allowing content caching and background content updating, offline functionality, push notifications, and a whole lot more; basically a programmable network proxy allowing control of page requests.
I mentioned in Foo
Winter is coming [webmasterworld.com] that a bypass of AdBlockers is itself increasingly being blocked. That ad blocker bypass involved the use of Web Sockets. One of the methods of blocking this bypass is the creation of a Content Security Policy (CSP) directive preventing Web Socket connections from occurring at all...
The question that arises, and that I have not yet bothered to test (as I haven't developed a PWA yet), is what effect such a directive will have on Service and Web Workers. And whether or how much that effect will in turn affect WPAs.
Fun and games as always.
