Use Service Workers to Turbocharge Your Web Apps

“You have made an excellent decision in picking up this book. If I was just starting on my learning path to mastery of Progressive Web Apps, there are not many folks I would trust more to get me there than John.”

—Simon MacDonald, Developer Advocate, Adobe Software developers have two options for the apps they build: native apps targeting a specific device or web apps that run on any device. Building native apps is challenging, especially when your app targets multiple system types—i.e., desktop computers, smartphones, televisions—because user experience varies dramatically across devices.

Service Workers—a relatively new technology—make it easier for web apps to bridge the gap between native and web capabilities. In Learning Progressive Web Apps, author John M. Wargo demonstrates how to use Service Workers to enhance the capabilities of a web app to create Progressive Web Apps (PWA). He focuses on the technologies that enable PWAs and how to use those technologies to enhance your web apps to deliver a more native-like experience.

• Build web apps a user can easily install on their local system and that work offline or on low-quality networks
• Utilize caching strategies that give you control over which app resources are cached and when
• Deliver background processing in a web application
• Implement push notifications that enable an app to easily engage with users or trigger action from a remote server

Throughout the book, Wargo introduces each core concept and illustrates the implementation of each capability through several complete, operational examples. You’ll start with simple web apps, then incrementally expand and extend them with state-of-the-art features. All example source code is available on GitHub, and additional resources are available on the author’s companion site, learningpwa.com.

Build reliable, fast, and engaging apps that deliver superb user experiences on any platform - without the development overhead of native apps!

• Use JavaScript and modern Web APIs to build apps that are responsive, secure, self-updating, searchable, shareable, and maintainable
• Start with a simple app and progressively enhance it with powerful modern capabilities
• Discover how Service Workers can improve user experience and performance simply and painlessly
• Full source code available on GitHub, with additional insights and support at pwalearn.com

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About the Author

John M. Wargo is a product manager, software developer, writer, presenter, father, husband, and geek. He spent more than 30 years working as a professional software developer, first as a hobbyist, then in enterprise software, and finally, for the last 15 years, in mobile development. He is the author of six books on mobile development and was a long-time contributor to the open-source Apache Cordova project. By day, he’s a principal program manager on the App + Cloud Experiences team at Microsoft. His website is johnwargo.com.