I felt as if I had acquired a new pair of eyes. Street corners and front yards I’ve walked past hundreds of times sudden

And even on Chrome — when beforeinstallprompt is fired, it means the app is installable. But what does it mean when it… doesn’t get fired? Does it mean the app can’t be installed? Or that the app is already installed? And what am I supposed to do with my install button while I wait for the beforeinstallprompt to fire or not fire?

In fact, the greatest strength of PWAs is also its biggest weakness. With apps living on the open web, nobody is really in control of the format. And when nobody is in control, things often end up being messy.

Right before 2020 turned into a global shitshow, I gathered a couple of friends and together we came up with an idea for a simple little app we thought would be helpful. Humbly called The Coronavirus App, our app ended up being used by more than 15 million people, making it — I believe — one of the most widely used PWAs ever.

Oh yeah and… what happens when I change my logo? Am I supposed to remember that it’s in the meta tags of my HTML document but also referenced somewhere in my JavaScript to dynamically create the assets that iOS needs? No way I’m going to remember that 2 years from now.

If you think of trees as nothing more than green blurs on the side of the road, here are a few common ones in San Francisco to learn so you can get started on a new-found appreciation:

Urban tree watching, in addition to the personal and societal benefits it provides, feels surprisingly intimate. I now know that a neighbor is hoping to harvest figs, that another has a garden full of native Californian plants, and yet another has possibly the only bloodwood tree outside of the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Getting to know the trees feels very much like getting to know my neighbors themselves. The plants in their yards offer a glimpse of their likes, dislikes, and the amount of care they dedicate to living beings. In a time when we have to stay apart to keep each other safe, getting to know our neighborhood trees is the perfect reminder that we are all part of something much bigger.

On Windows/Chrome, the beforeinstallprompt will also sometimes be emitted several times per session. And sometimes after the app has been installed. Meaning that by relying on that event, you could ask users to install the app… after they’ve installed it. On iOS/Safari, it never gets triggered at all. So you never even get an opportunity to tell your users your app is installable.

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r was navigating uncharted waters, but today, charts and graphs are extremely commonplace. Over the years, tools such as Excel, Tableau, and PowerPoint have made it extremely easy for us to quickly visualize data sets and share them widely. Given this, you might be surprised to learn that mistakes in data visualizations run rampant in the world of visual content. For instance, it’s common to assume that comparing numbers to one another always requires a bar chart, while showing percentages always requires a pie chart. Or sometimes it’s assumed that a bar chart can have multiple scales, or worse, no scale at all.

Create a JSON file, call it manifest.json, fill out the fields recommended by Google. Then create a JavaScript file, call it service-worker.js, register it from your client-side code. You’re done. You have a PWA that kinda words. It took you a couple of hours to figure everything out, and 30 minutes to actually write the code. Not bad.

In addition to their beauty, urban trees are also highly functional. They provide habitats for birds, bees, and butterflies, reduce the heat-island effect in the city, help filter stormwater, and improve air quality by storing carbon dioxide. In other words, we couldn’t live without them.

Urban tree watching, in addition to the personal and societal benefits it provides, feels surprisingly intimate. I now know that a neighbor is hoping to harvest figs, that another has a garden full of native Californian plants, and yet another has possibly the only bloodwood tree outside of the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Getting to know the trees feels very much like getting to know my neighbors themselves. The plants in their yards offer a glimpse of their likes, dislikes, and the amount of care they dedicate to living beings. In a time when we have to stay apart to keep each other safe, getting to know our neighborhood trees is the perfect reminder that we are all part of something much bigger.

Google is the reference when it comes to PWAs. So if you create one yourself, chances are you’ll read their documentation. It’s pretty good, except it’s really just good for Chrome.

And on the web… things evolve. Pretty fast. So if tomorrow Apple, Samsung or Google make a change I’ll have to 1- find a way to make sure I’m aware of it and 2- rewrite my code accordingly.

I love the web. And I love PWAs. What’s not to love, really? With a PWA, you only have one code base to manage. Your app works everywhere. And you don’t have to share 30% of your hard-earned revenue with Apple and Google.

Or we could also talk about the appinstalled event. It would be really useful if it wasn’t for the fact that this event is never triggered at all on iOS/Safari or Android/Samsung Internet. After the app is installed, you’ll likely want to hide or disable the install button. How do you do that when you’re not even sure the app was installed in the first place?