Has anyone tried or succeeded in using Bubble to create a progressive web app? I’m sure there would be some coding required. Is it possible, and if so, could you give me some tips please.
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What do you mean by progressive web app? Do you have any examples?
They are essentially web apps that can behave like native apps when viewed on mobile. So if you visit a progressive web app on your mobile device, you can save it on your phone as an app, and from then on you can access it outside of the browser and offline. You even have push notifications.
They’re fairly new but Google is really pushing them. This article explains it in more detail : PWA
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Bubble doesn’t do that yet. Apps on Bubble need an internet connection to function. I imagine when the team starts looking to native functions, something like this will come up, but today is not that day.
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That’s a shame. Thank you for letting me know.
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PWA’s use lazy loading and service workers to essentially cache static assets such as UX and functions such as routing allowing offline use. Next, user interaction that requires database changes, such as paying for items in your shopping cart or tweeting, are cached on the device until a data connection can be established, at which point the action is completed.
They’re the (very near?) future standard of web applications, according to a heavily pushed campaign by google since at least I/O at the end of May this year. Applications targeted towards consumers in the developing world who have less access to stable data connections is a use case for pwas (and also Android’s biggest market). A personal theory is it’s google trying to get away from Java for obvious reasons, and because it’s google they’ll probably start giving pwa’s preferential seo consideration as hinted at by polymerjs and as demonstrated by AMP.
I know porting a bubble app to the …istore? the idunno anything about apple store or whatever, is very well doable, but I have been wondering if @emmanuel has explored PWA’s as a potential all out replacement to native android applications. Bubble is built on node I believe, so in theory it’s possible? I couldn’t begin to imagine what that might entail…
I did get prompted to “Install forum.bubble.io” on my note5 yesterday, which I did, and the forums at least appear to be progressive.
p.s. apple is cool too 
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We don’t know yet to be honest. When we’ll start actively working on native stuff we’ll look at options, but right now I can’t tell 1) how good that is 2) if it’s a good option for Bubble.
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for sure. personally, whenever someone asks me about “apps” I just roll my eyes. it’s responsive and you’ve got wifi or data.
just go to the url you’ll be fine.
Bump. Wondering if the Bubble team has given this any more thought. Progressive Web Apps seem like a good fit for Bubble - a way to give Bubble app users the “mobile app experience”.
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Bump. @emmanuel any update on progressive web apps in bubble?
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No we’ll look into this when we look into native studf
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Thanks
Do you have an idea when you will actively work on native stuff and so on PWA questions ?
To improve user experience, the possibility to work offline offers to bubble’s users many possibilities.
Thank you.
Is this appear to be a decent web app or pwa https://webapp.aiwok.co.uk/ I got this example from https://progressive-webapps.co.uk/
pwa is the future native mobile apps is the past
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pwa is the future native mobile apps is the past
My friend has a development company and he told me the same, that native apps will fall. What does bubble developers think of this topic today? I know this discussion was old but I just tried a progressive website and it’s wooosh, so fast compared to the app I was building with bubble (SPA).
But do PWA work truly offline? How is data stored while offline, and synced when connection returns? If there is no data connection when the app is first opened will it still work?
I think that is possible to create a pwa in bubble, but you will depend on the response times of bubble and its files of js, try to test any bubble app with the lighthouse tool of google.
Maybe creating a plugin where you can add the necessary js code to register a service worker and a manifest will be sufficient to have the minimum requirements for a pwa.
I think that having all the benefits of a pwa will be not possible but maybe you can have a splashscreen and an installation icon for your app in bubble.
Also for caching certain changes in your data, I think that you need to expose a rest api for your data in bubble, and do the changes with a rest call, if you do that maybe it will be possible to have an offline pwa caching the changes of the data
I will try to do that in the near future, I promise I will share my results
I think Google’s Flutter and Firebase should be a consideration. Since it’s write-once, package-twice, the time to the play/app stores is dramatically reduced, and easier because it uses the Dart language. They play really well with bubble and embrace more http-based concerns. As one’s app grows, it will need new, native features. Those are slow to be implemented for webviews, meaning options for PWA manifests might be a waiting game.
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We do! we are working on a tutorial to share the results.
Tldr; you can have a pwa in bubble, but still will not work offline, even wont display the page, just a blank page, but you can receive notifications and install it as a regular pwa
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