Today, on Hacker News, I saw a link to the PWA Store and I thought: The Boolean Game should be here. The problem is that, to qualify as a PWA you need a Service Worker. I took a look into service workers when I first programmed this game (which was around a year ago), but the only benefit I saw was offline caching, and the entire concept was foreign to me, so I let it go.
In the last few months, however, I found myself only with a mobile connection provided in the form of a hotspot. I have to pair computer with phone multiple times per day, and when you want to sit down and write and get a “no internet connection” message, that desire fizzles away. So I took the time to install a service worker on blank.page so that it would cache the app for offline work. It is one of my favorite features.
The experience of adding a service worker to blank.page was really frustrating. It is javascript, but the things it does are very foreign to any javascript developer, front-end or backend, and the fact that it works only under https:// will make you spend a lot of time figuring out how to test locally.
But after some frustrating days it was working.
This time I knew what I was doing. It took me the same time it took me to write this little text, and then I submitted it to the PWA Store.
Dear reader: I have not tested this on an Android device, should you find a show stopper please let me know at mark@method.ac