Doesn't seem to work with javascript turned off.
In earlier days this was first sign of being progressive, but new generation of developers doesn't seem to care about this?
In earlier days this was first sign of being progressive, but new generation of developers doesn't seem to care about this?
The former is about web apps that bridge the gap between web and native. Technologically the foundation lies in using service workers for offline support, and serving the app over SSL. Not only do these web apps work offline but when using modern browsers on mobile (e.g. Firefox/Chrome on Android) it's possible to "install" them and use them like native apps.
The latter is about websites that don't rely on CSS or JS to provide critical interaction, i.e. making the website work if neither CSS nor JS is available (though generally this is simplified to "when JS is disabled").
Apart from the name the two are only related in that both are intended to help users in sub-optimal scenarios (e.g. on slow/unreliable connections).
The complete abandonment of any form of progressive enhancement is depressing. We need to get some real metrics on user engagement (slow load over poor connections), SEO drawbacks (yes google can index this stuff but does it rank as well?) and accessibility (how well do screen readers really cope?).
Get some facts and start hitting people over the head with them.
Hopefully that will change.
Sounds like your gripe is less with client-side code than with JavaScript as a language.
We have a saying for that in my native language. It roughly translates as "All I hear is mimimi...".
No company will ever publicize this data.
That is not to say that UX should be thrown out of the window for the former, of course.
I do agree that something like NYT shouldn't be a web app.
EDIT: I should mention that a lot of these things come down to requirements, of course. I don't think it's fair to say that every web app must be PWA compliant... it depends!
The biggest argument seems to be laziness: "Progressive enhancement is hard, here's a term that I can apply liberally to give myself an excuse not to bother". That may make a good business argument on a case-by-case basis, but it's not an absolute, and I don't see why it necessarily applies to webapps but not to websites.
Also, React has made progressive enhancement a lot easier than it used to be
> The biggest argument seems to be laziness: "Progressive enhancement is hard, here's a term that I can apply liberally to give myself an excuse not to bother".
It's always going to come down to the requirements and an understanding of who is using your web app.
In some cases, you should absolutely optimize for PWA... Facebook, for example, is a webapp that considers users in developing countries with shotty networks. They also optimize for those with blindness.
Implementing those features in a webapp like Kibana (visualizer for elasticsearch data) would be a wasted effort given the user demographic and the purpose of the app.
TL;DR: "It depends"
EDIT: I just realized I may not have addressed your point " I don't see why it necessarily applies to webapps but not to websites.". I think the answer is simply "Webapps are inherently more complex than websites, therefore, more strict web requirements need to be met". This is an easy way to compartmentalize it, but isn't an absolute.
My point is that they are not very progressive when they fail to run without javascript, independent of what name Google marketing team put on this bad practice.
The reason websites should work without JS is that JS may fail to load (or worse: load incompletely or very slowly) over dodgy connections.
PWAs help by optimising repeat visits. This isn't exactly useful for something like news sites (where users typically visit individual articles at a time and may never come back for weeks/months) but can be immensely helpful for apps like Facebook where users will come back frequently.
PWAs also help by emphasising load performance. So even if the connection is slow, the app may still load quickly and reduce the time until the first meaningful paint and the time-to-interactive.
PWAs are orthogonal to making the app "work" without JS. You don't lose anything by making a regular "progressively enhanced" app a PWA. You also don't gain anything by making one that is not "progressively enhanced" a PWA.
However by using something like React to render the app you can use the same technology to render it on the server, delivering full content to the browser on the first paint. Where you take it from there is up to you and has nothing to do with PWAs or non.
PWA's are something that Google is pushing pretty hard right now, to me that suggests there is becoming less of a concern around JavaScript being turned off than previous years.
However, that still doesn't rule out producing a "progressively enhanced" progressive web app. In fact, React (which this project uses) makes progressive enhancement even easier with ReactDOMServer and the componentWillMount/componentDidMount differentiation. So the downvotes are particularly unwarranted.