Phoenix: Lightweight PWA framework?

To me Progressive Web Application (PWA) implies a refinement of the Single Page Application concept which means it’s JS heavy and tends to use some sort of JS framework. For the time being “lightweight PWA” seems to be an oxymoron.

The implementation style you seek seems to be exemplified by the sidecar site (Github, article) which should be quite easy to emulate with Phoenix/EEx - it doesn’t even use a CSS framework but you have to know your CSS.

Yeah, PWA’s can be run entirely locally once downloaded, so they require javascript for any functionality. vue.js is really easy to get started with and going for PWA’s for one example.

Ok, thank you. I learned something…

So i want to create something like WPA-light I don’t need the offline functionality for my application as most people are almost always online.

What I really don’t like are pages that have almost no html when looked into their source code. It doesn’t feel right to me. For me there has to be HTML in the browser.

So I can go the JS route and my app will feel almost native on mobile devices or I can stay in my HTML/minimal-JS world and live with its downsides. So far I’m still undecided.

I don’t know if this helps or not, but I successfully created a non-spa PWA using Phoenix. Progressive Web Apps have a scale of functionality they can do. For me, I just wanted something that would make an icon on mobile devices and show a message about being offline when there was no connectivity. You can do a lot without having to build a full-fledged SPA.

Some helpful tools/readings for me were:

So you don’t need a PWA.

I need ‘add to homescreen’ and look&feel of a native app, to be honest.

Anything but using native API’s always look horrible though…

Every react-native app or some embedded webview drives me nuts on my phone because they always just feel ‘wrong’, the inputs are handled wrong, the interactions are wrong, the activities are wrong… >.<

If you want a native look&feel app, you really should go native. I’m a huge proponent of that.

Ever tried Elixir Forum on Android from a home screen icon? Feels absolutely as a native app for me.

Hey @Nefcairon,

You’ll probably find Breethe by Simplabs interesting. They created a PWA with Glimmer as the frontend and Phoenix as the backend but included SSR content rather than just using a client/api combo.

As for your use case SSR content and a service worker should be enough to run the site as a PWA. And when it comes to css something lightweight would be best but not crucial. It should only effect the initial load. After that everything will be cached.

Breethe.app Repos:

• Client Repo
• Server Repo

Routinely! And it absolutely does not feel native. ^.^

The menu is in the wrong location, the menu accessor brings up the browser menu (not the page, even though it is a full screen page), can’t slide in the menu, doesn’t support activities, much slower than native, the buttons don’t look like buttons (they look like unthemed rectangles), etc… etc…

Now there are some fantastic apps that combine native and web use, like Sync for Reddit as one, they are fully native with all the features there-of but do a lot of web processing (mostly in the background to prepare for your use), that’s generally the way to go.