Tags: resources

At the end of my new book, Going Offline, I have a little collection of resources relating to service workers. Here’s how I introduce them:

If this book were a podcast, then this would be the point at which I would be imploring you to rate me on iTunes (or I’d be telling you about a really good mattress). Instead, I’d like to give you some hyperlinks so that you can explore some of the topics in this brief book in more detail.

It always feels a little strange to publish a list of hyperlinks in a physical book, so I figured I’d republish them here for easy access…

Explanations

• Mariko Kosaka wrote and illustrated an explanation of service workers in a post on her site called “Service Worker, what are you?” (https://kosamari.com/notes/Service-Worker-what-are-you).
• Mariko also wrote and illustrated an explanation of promises called “The Promise of a Burger Party” (https://kosamari.com/notes/the-promise-of-a-burger-party).
• Ire Aderinokun wrote a clear guide to “The Service Worker Lifecycle” (https://bitsofco.de/the-service-worker-lifecycle/).
• Yoav Weiss has an explanation of different kinds of caching in “A Tale of Four Caches” (https://blog.yoav.ws/tale-of-four-caches/).

Guides

• Lyza Gardner wrote a step-by-step guide for Smashing Magazine on “Making A Service Worker: A Case Study” (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/02/making-a-service-worker/).
• Jake Archibald has collected a series of service worker strategies into an “offline cookbook” (https://jakearchibald.com/2014/offline-cookbook/).
• Jake also recorded an excellent online video series that you can enjoy for free (https://www.udacity.com/course/offline-web-applications—ud899).

Examples

• Mike Riethmuller has on offline page on his site that shows articles you’ve previously visited (https://madebymike.com.au/writing/service-workers/).
• Ethan Marcotte has a similar offline page, but he also shows metadata for each article (https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/going-offline/).
• Una Kravets allows you to choose which pages on her site you want to save for reading offline (https://una.im/save-offline/).

Progressive web apps

• Alex Russell answers the question “What, Exactly, Makes Something A Progressive Web App?” (https://infrequently.org/2016/09/what-exactly-makes-something-a-progressive-web-app/).
• Ada Rose Cannon goes into the details of “The Building Blocks Of Progressive Web Apps” (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/09/the-building-blocks-of-progressive-web-apps/).
• Aaron Gustafson quite rightly points out that “Yes, That Web Project Should Be a PWA” (https://alistapart.com/article/yes-that-web-project-should-be-a-pwa).
• Jason Grigsby outlines “The Business Case for Progressive Web Apps” (https://cloudfour.com/thinks/the-business-case-for-progressive-web-apps/).

Tools

• Google released a collection of scripts and tools for going offline called Workbox (https://developers.google.com/web/tools/workbox/).
• To get started with your manifest and service worker, you can paste your website’s URL into PWA Builder (http://preview.pwabuilder.com/).
• Lighthouse is a great testing tool for progressive web apps that’s now bundled into Chrome’s Developer Tools under the Audits panel (https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/).

Documentation

• Over at the website of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) you can dig into the details of the Web App Manifest specification (https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/).
• The ever-evolving service worker specification is on the W3C’s Github account (https://w3c.github.io/ServiceWorker/).

I had a really enjoyable time at Codebar Brighton last week, not least because Morty came along.

I particularly enjoy teaching people who have zero previous experience of making a web page. There’s something about explaining HTML and CSS from first principles that appeals to me. I especially love it when people ask lots of questions. “What does this element do?”, “Why do some elements have closing tags and others don’t?”, “Why is it textarea and not input type="textarea"?” The answer usually involves me going down a rabbit-hole of web archeology, so I’m in my happy place.

But there’s only so much time at Codebar each week, so it’s nice to be able to point people to other resources that they can peruse at their leisure. It turns out that’s it’s actually kind of tricky to find resources at that level. There are lots of great articles and tutorials out there for professional web developers—Smashing Magazine, A List Apart, CSS Tricks, etc.—but no so much for complete beginners.

Here are some of the resources I’ve found:

• MarkSheet by Jeremy Thomas is a free HTML and CSS tutorial. It starts with an explanation of the internet, then the World Wide Web, and then web browsers, before diving into HTML syntax. Jeremy is the same guy who recently made CSS Reference.
• Learn to Code HTML & CSS by Shay Howe is another free online book. You can buy a paper copy too. It’s filled with good, clear explanations.
• Zero to Hero Coding by Vera Deák is an ongoing series. She’s starting out on her career as a front-end developer, so her perspective is particularly valuable.

If I find any more handy resources, I’ll link to them and tag them with “learning”.

I often get asked what resources I’d recommend for someone totally new to making websites. There are surprisingly few tutorials out there aimed at the complete beginner. There’s Jon Duckett’s excellent—and beautiful—book. There’s the Codebar curriculum (which I keep meaning to edit and update; it’s all on Github).

Now there’s a new resource by Damian Wielgosik called How to Code in HTML5 and CSS3. Personally, I would drop the “5” and the “3”, but that’s a minor quibble; this is a great book. It manages to introduce concepts in a logical, understandable way.

And it’s free.