Link archive: July 19th, 2016

The best of Google I/O 2016 | Andrew Betts

Andrew picks out his favourite bits from this year’s Google I/O, covering web payments, CSS containment, and—of course—Service Workers and progressive web apps, although he does note (and I concur):

I wish Google would focus as much attention on ‘normal’ sites that perform navigations as they do on so called ‘app-shell’ (which is just a new name for single-page apps, as far as I can tell), but then many people will be building SPAs and these recipes will make those apps fly. In news publishing we seem to flip flop between traditional page navigations and SPAs, but I’ve never found a SPA news site (or a native app) that I really like more than a normal website. Maybe a really good progressive web app will change that. But I’m not convinced.

Still, as he says:

All this really just underscores how flexible ServiceWorker is and that with it we can disagree on what the right solution is, but we can all get what we want anyway.

A Comprehensive Guide to Font Loading Strategies—zachleat.com

A terrific rundown of all your options when it comes to web font loading.

The Business Case for Progressive Web Apps - Cloud Four

Jason looks at the business reasons for and against building progressive web apps. In short, there’s everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Seriously, why would you not add a Service Worker and a manifest file to your site? (assuming you’re already on HTTPS)