Broken Web, Isn't it?

Today, while I was watching a course from Frontend Masters course by Kylie Simpson, he touched a sensitive topic about the web. It was really impressive, his ideas were about current status of the web and worth to think on it. So I did it. Users demand high-quality, dependable experiences from the web apps with which they engage on a regular basis in our fast evolving digital environment. Unfortunately, this expectation is not always satisfied, particularly if a user's internet connection is inconsistent or non-existent. However, web developers and enterprises should take these cases into account. So brace up as we get into this intriguing subject :)

Note: Course was about Service workers.

Today's internet users are always on the go, using online services in a variety of settings ranging from warm homes to hectic offices, serene public parks, and even when traveling across regions or even nations. Even they are trying to access these services while they are on the plane! These diverse settings, however, bring varying degrees of internet reliability, frequently leaving users in locations with poor or inconsistent internet connections.

No matter where they are physically located or how quickly their Internet connection is or screen is broken :), it does not matter; customers expect nothing less than perfection from their online purchasing experiences. If they are paying for these services, they have every right to utilize them. This emphasizes the urgent requirement for user-centric method of creating web-based applications that can operate without constant, high-speed internet connectivity. I believe this is the most efficient way to increase usability. Especially PWAs’ developers need to use enhance the technology to keep this up. The idea that if it works, we should just keep doing it and bring it into production is something I had never considered before.

Extending the Web Experience

Historically, internet connectivity has been a major component influencing web application performance. However, if we want to provide the greatest possible user experience (and we should), we need to think about more than simply connection.

Future-Proof Technology Implementation

We must embrace new technology developed to handle these difficulties in order to reach this degree of consistency and robustness. Enter the Service Workers.

Service Workers are web workers that act as a programmable network proxy, allowing you to manage how network requests from your website are handled. This game-changing technology enables offline surfing, background updates, and push alerts, dramatically improving the user experience.

We can dramatically increase the app's availability and dependability by introducing Service Workers in a web application, independent of the user's internet connection quality. Isn't that something to get excited about? :)

As far as I see, most of the junior and mid devs are not curious about this at all. They are trying to memorize the most used methods of arrays for instance. But this is the one of the most advanced topics in JavaScript. I learned Service workers while I was investigating “How I can improve the performance of my companies web application?”. Service workers blowed my mind! It was a magical and little-known topic to learn and of course beyond the juniority.

Web Application Redesign

However, in today's digital economy, platforms often neglect to take this user-centric approach to application design into account. Use Twitter as an illustration. Some real-world examples show the platform's weaknesses in this area and encourage a fresh strategy for creating web-based apps.

The Internet is not a fixed entity; rather, it changes throughout time to meet the demands of its users. At this time, you can start taking use of the Service Workers' enchantment. We can provide a constant, high-quality experience in any setting by employing state-of-the-art technologies. Is it not neat? :)

These are real-life examples that shows how you can use Service Workers on your web applications;

1. Offline Support: Service Workers can cache network requests, enabling your web app to function even when there's no internet connection. For example, a news website could use Service Workers to cache the most recent articles, allowing users to read them even when offline.
2. Background Sync: Service Workers can synchronize data in the background, improving the user experience. For instance, using Twitter offline. (This was Kylie’s example).
3. Push Notifications: Even when a web app isn't open in a browser, Service Workers can send and receive data and show notification to user.
4. Resource Caching: Service Workers can cache resources like images, or any file that you can think of. Speeding up load times and improving performance.
5. Network Request Control: Service Workers can control how network requests are handled. For instance, they can serve cached content when the network is unavailable or slow, and update the cache in the background when the network is available again. An example would be a weather app updating its forecast data in the background while serving the user cached data for immediate interaction.
6. Content Delivery Adaptation: Based on the user's network conditions, a Service Worker can adapt the content delivery to offer the best possible experience. For instance, a video streaming website might use a Service Worker to automatically switch to lower quality streams when the user's network connection is poor, ensuring smooth playback.

Finally, flexibility and toughness are essential for the web's future. No matter where our customers are or how they use the internet, it is our duty as developers, entrepreneurs, and engineers to provide them with exceptional digital experiences. In order to fulfill the needs of today's mobile and internationally connected users, we make sure that our online services are "digitally ready.”

Kylie has lots of books about JS. I want to write them all about also but you can see his workes from here - Kylie's Personal Website

Source - The Course