Book Image

Progressive Web Apps with React

By : Scott Domes
Book Image

Progressive Web Apps with React

By: Scott Domes

Overview of this book

For years, the speed and power of web apps has lagged behind native applications. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) aim to solve this by bridging the gap between the web apps and native apps, delivering a host of exciting features. Simultaneously, React is fast becoming the go-to solution for building modern web UIs, combining ease of development with performance and capability. Using React alongside PWA technology will make it easy for you to build a fast, beautiful, and functional web app. After an introduction and brief overview of the goals of PWAs, the book moves on to setting up the application structure. From there, it covers the Webpack build process and the process of creating React components. You'll learn how to set up the backend database and authentication solution to communicate with Firebase and how to work with React Router. Next, you will create and configure your web app manifest, making your PWA installable on mobile devices. Then you'll get introduced to service workers and see how they work as we configure the app to send push notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging. We'll also explore the App Shell pattern, a key concept in PWAs and look at its advantages regarding efficient performance. Finally, you'll learn how to add of?ine capabilities to the app with caching and confirm your progress by auditing your PWA with Lighthouse. Also, you'll discover helper libraries and shortcuts that will help you save time and understand the future of PWA development.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Our first audit


Open up your DevTools, navigate to the Audits tab, and click on Run Audit.

It should take a few seconds, and then give you a nice summary of how our site looks, drumroll. How good is our Progressive Web App?:

Not bad at all. In fact, it doesn't get better than that in the PWA category. Give yourself a pat on the back and perhaps a high-five for a job well-done. Let's evaluate the readout, and then decide whether we want to move on or aim for 100% in all categories.

Please note that since Lighthouse is under active development, your scores may not match the above due to new criteria. In that case, I encourage you to take a look at what Lighthouse is complaining about, and see if you can solve it to get to that '100' score.