About : Mobile Web Progress
In a few words, May was a bit like a crazy month.. Little I knew back then than June won’t be different..
// This draft was written around June but never published till now.. So.. Sorry …
I spent the first weekend of May at JSConf EU and after returning to Cluj on Monday, May 8th from beautiful and colourful Berlin, I went to work (yes, you read that right). In the evening I got home, unpacked and packed again (told you it was a crazy month). Next morning I went too work (yes, again you read that correctly) till around the afternoon when I went to my second home in Cluj — yes the airport.
First leg to Munich went smoothly, watched the last game of U- BT from semifinals and read some articles to improve my talk. But in MUC Airport, I had around 5h layover — Luckily I have access to the Business Lounges (tips and tricks how to get it, soon, as I never fly nor ever flew Business) so I went to work a bit there. After like 2h I raised my eyes from the laptop and had a bit of surprise.
I admit, I felt I am getting roots there in the airport.. At least I felt product. Now up for a new adventure — Shipol Airport — I’ve been to Amsterdam before but flew from Cluj to Einhoven directly and then took a train. As I realised I am landing late and also flying back really early, I decided to book a hotel there, in the airport. For sure will be trains till late so I can enjoy the city without the morning rush to get ai the airport in time without any obstacles (Brussel’s story some other time). Looking at my possibilities, I choose CitizenM — my friend @Bacharakis stayed at one before and told me it cool from technological point of view so I decided to try it ( please read test it). And I did not regret my decision. It was a small room, not with the runway view but with the world trade centre building — still nice and still saw some planes taking off! Everything in the room was controlled by an iPad. That was both cool and scary. Definitelly will check out the internet to see if someone hack that already.
As I am an early bird, I woke up early to get ready to visit Keukofn Gardens! Another reason to choose the airport hotel was that I had a direct connection to the tulip gardens from there. So I jumped in the bus and I was on my way. It was a super colorful experience, bitter a bit because the big lands of tulips were already harvest, but the place had a lot of types of tulips, different arrangements so it was still worthy. Probably I will like to go again, earlier in April maybe.
Around noon I headed to Amsterdam, to have lunch with @torgo in the city to finalise all remaining aspect before the event. Also spent the afternoon to work from this cute cafe — … — and because it closed around 4Pm we went for the safe option.. Starbucks.. Such a difference between them!
Relax, I did not forget why I was there. at 6 we headed ourselves to the venue — which was a very cool one! We decided I should go first, so here I am up on stage (literally up as it was high). You can find my slides here. My talk gave on over view about older and new principles in both web and mobile but some that are not 100% adopted by all.
Mobile First was proposed in 2009 is still debated — and I do not argue it shouldn’t. Some, included Big Brother G do it too much and it get irritating. ARTICLE. But if we consider mobile web, I think it should be present all times. Because we do not have a magnifying glass with us nor we are all with image memory to remember how the whole page is and what’s on it when we zoom.
Next on the mobile plate to consider is Offline First. Specially this part is dear to me. It definitely reminder me of Firefox OS Apps.
Different studies show how much data is consumed and how much that cost in different countries. In this situations, those people do not stay online all day long as many in western countries do. Also, if you live in a big city, you might know by now that you are not all the time 4G. And you probably want to consider a mountain trip and you will be travelling through a tunnel maybe? The list can go on, but I guess you figured by now that there are plenty of times when we are offline. My slides have all these data on, and some examples.
So how are all this implemented? Through hard workers, service workers. If you want to read more about this, head up to serviceworke.rs (lovely brought to you by @mozilla employees and community)
I am a big supporter of PWA from several reasons. It reminds me of Firefox OS when we pledged to the web being the platform. I now realise we were ahead of time and we quitted to easily on it. Secondly, it puts the user in control. And we get now to my favourite part..
User First.
Always consider the user first. I know native apps are shinier, faster and all that. But.. you mostly do not have an app for all platforms and neither the either has all the space and data needed for it to store and update. So, a PWA working as a Native App might be the solution for most of people. Yes, there are cases when there is no sense for it. You have a lot of criteria in order to decide. My humble opinion after being on several devices is that PWA is pushing the web and the user forward.
Second for the evening, was Daniel (@torgo )
I really think it was a good event, specially for Amsterdam’s mobile web. The attendees had really good questions and both me and Daniel tried to do our best to answer them. I am still open for discussions around the topic. We enjoyed some fries and really good IPA beer for the next hour after the talks. Mostly all attendees remained till the end — which for me was a sign that such events should be organised more.
I’ve returned to my airport hotel around midnight and woke up 1h15 mins before my flight. Yes, staying 5 mins from departures terminal was a (very) good decision.
Thanks so much @samsunginternet for the invite and @mozilla for helping me get there.
