PWA

pwa is the current working version of this project converted to a progressive web app. pwa-dev is where those changes are tested before being merges into pwa.

A progressive web app has two main parts (to my limited knowledge):

• a service worker
• a manifest

A manifest is a json file with all sorts of information on how the website is supposed to behave as an app. There are theme colors, names, logos, and various other tags, many of which are not present on the current manifest. For example, the tag short_name and the images included in icons make up the app logo a user clicks on when opening the app in an android device.

A service worker is the most important part of a pwa. A service worker can implement all sorts of kinds of caching on a website, from simple offline page caching, to a full offline experience. The service worker needs to be registered with a script in the landing page of the website; the script should check for a service worker and register one, should one not exist. The service worker is registered by calling a sw.js file. This file will determine how the service worker operates. The one this project uses, which is modified from MIT licensed PWA Builder code, precaches an offline page and some logos, then it caches any page the user visits.

In the future, this site should implement a full offline experience using service worker.

Known bugs are all listed on the issue tracker and tagged with PWA.