JS Poland 2017 — Takeaways

Notes from the conference. Based on 20 hand-written pages. Strong or misleading interpretations are all on me.

TL;DR; No new framework announced, go home kiddo… Oh Wait Nope! Progressive Web Apps happens to be the new hotness.

Keynote — Progressive Web Apps

Christian Heilmann (video, slides, twitter)

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) — simply — are just websites built to be more like native apps. It’s not a new concept, but so far we were failing. Lack of native capabilities forced workarounds. Hardware and JS engines were not as fast as today. Everyone had to figure out their own definition of “Web App”.

Consider PWA as a set of principles to follow during building an app. Browsers already implement mechanisms that help to achieve them.

“Progressive” comes from progressive enhancement. Once your users have more superpowers, your app should give them more possibilities. Without forgetting rest of users. We’re talking here about network capabilities, offline mode, screen size, budget devices.

Is it possible to build?