Why Your Shiny new WebApp is (still) a Form from the 90s

Serge Krul

Me @ DevShots 2011

Websites of the 90s

Websites of the 90s

Two Main Features

● Ugly (bare bones)

● Slow (round-trips to the server)

Websites of today

Websites of today

Two Main Features

● Beautiful (well designed)

● Fast (single page interaction)

Better UX. Really?

What about Performance?

Ever had this?

Images, videos, JavaScript, ads, trackers, integrations, ...

Performance is Money

Meet Donald from Nigeria

Opera Mini vs. Mobile Safari

Facebook Lite

Performance IS Money

Performance is Our Earth

What About Accessibility?

Physical Disability

Circumstance Disability

Technical Disability

Disability. Ability.

What About Problems?

Everyone Haz JavaScriptz, rait?

It’s sad because it’s true

Pheewww...

Ooops...

Solution: Progressive Enhancement

GoogleUndercover

Let’s strip Facebook (Sergebook)

Let’s strip Gmail (Smail)

Let’s strip Trello (Krullo)

Isn’t it more Work?

You get more features.

Charge for them! Be a professional and demand the

needed resources in order to do a great job.

Yeah, but

Responsive design is more work too.

And yet people expect a nice mobile experience as a

baseline.

Yeah, but

Accessibility is more more work too.

And yet the Israeli law now demands it.

Yeah, but

Better separation of concerns and better software

architecture.

Added Benefit

Progressive Enhancement is Cool Again

“A lot of the talks at this year’s Chrome

Dev Summit were about progressive web

apps. This makes me happy. But I think the

focus is perhaps a bit too much on the

“app” part on not enough on “progressive”.

--Jeremy Keith

Resources

● Bruce Lawson:

http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2016/one-weird-trick-to-get-online-designers-hate-it/

● Ben Swartz:

https://speakerdeck.com/benschwarz/vanity-performance-metrics-looking-beyond-the-numbers

● Jeremy Keith:

https://adactio.com/

● Progressive Web Apps (Addi Osmani):

https://addyosmani.com/blog/getting-started-with-progressive-web-apps/

Thank You :)