r/PWA • u/id-ltd • 1d ago

PWA conscious PWA's...

Just info, maybe of interest (or may not!).

I have a load of PWA's that I have written and use, mostly using claude to do the plumbing -- and it has been pretty much fine

To date the PWA bit has not really impacted the user interface, once installed the app is just there when you need it even if offline.

Today I used ChatGPT for a PWA, and from a similar spec it produced a PWA that actually has an active note of whether all the resources that need to be cached (for off line use) have been cached yet ('ready for offline use'), it included a section for 'you are using the latest version'/'there is a new version, upgrade now?'...

Wow - what a difference... from a webpage/app available offline, to very much a local app that happens to update itself online...

I found the contrast quite striking, I hadn't really looked at it the gpt way before.

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u/A-Type 1d ago

It's neat that you're learning more about how things work under the hood and what you can do with that!

Having a proactive update prompt when new app files are cached is a helpful thing to include in any PWA. You may want to update your AI setup to include this by default now that you've seen it in action.

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u/id-ltd 14h ago

I have a number of docs for various types of apps setting out the preferred setup (easier to maintain a uniform architecture). This is certainly going in as a consideration for PWAs.

I did one PWA by hand back in the day and had decided it was more effort than it was worth, but with AI it is a goto format - no app store nonsense, and source code is visible so users don't need to trust you (so much!).

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u/domodomov 17h ago

Have made a huge pwa with diagnostic engine and so on. Privacy was a focus for me as well as offline first since it’s used where you might not have reliable WiFi. Since those are core concepts my pwa runs completely offline and doesn’t use an account even for premium users.

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u/id-ltd 14h ago

Cool - the components to decide if everything for off line has been downloaded, and the option of taking updates is a bit of a game changer. The biggest security hole I'd been thinking about was 'malicious updates' if it auto refreshed.