PWA Development Questions

Scripture App Builder
1

Thanks for your development of PWA’s. Is there any chance PWA’s will have these SAB features:

Search, notes, bookmarking, history, font sizing, or background color options, line spacing options, Verse to image, or verse to video.
Can Pinch/squeeze be improved so enlarging re-wraps text instead of going off screen?

Installing a PWA is a bit difficult for our average user. Is there any way to make a popup window appear after the url loads, that has a button to install the PWA on the phone?

Is there any problem with including audio in a PWA so the audio can play offline? I am thinking a whole NT audio~250MB.

Roger

2

This page details how to use webapk to make PWA’s install automatically on Android with no user actions. I hope this can be implemented soon, since users will have a hard time finding the install function in phone browsers.

3

Hello @rgreen620,

We had an intern project this summer to improve the PWA. We have made a lot of progress, but it is not complete yet. I have made proposals to two universities to continue this as a senior capstone project. We are also trying to develop this as open source so that the template used to generate the PWA can be customized for your project if we haven’t gotten to a feature yet that you need (and a pull requests can be submitted).

Here are the features we are trying to implement first:

  • navigation drawer
  • multiple book collections
  • grid or list navigation like native app
  • notes, bookmarks, highlights
  • single view, split view, or interlinear view
  • UI styles like native app
  • normal, sepia, dark themes
  • use audio sources (asset, internet, FCBH)

It is good to see that you have prioritized these additional features:

  • font sizing (do you mean the user being able to adjust the text display size)
  • background color (is this satisfied by using normal, sepia, and dark themes?)
  • line spacing (do you mean the user being able to adjust the line spacing)
  • verse to image
  • verse to video (this might be challenging due to library requirements)

I looked at your link about “details how to use webapk to make PWA’s install automatically on Android with no user action” and it still requires the user to respond to a prompt for installation.

I think it would be extremely dangerous if visiting a website could automatically install a webapk on the device without the user accepting the action.

PWAs have to pass the install criteria before a browser will offer to the user to install the app. One of the issues with the current PWA is that it can take very long to download all of the scripture HTML pages before the app can meet the install criteria (we are attempting to address this with the new PWA as well).

Thanks for your input!

Chris

4

Thanks for this update about PWA development. If I ranked our requests for PWA new Features it would be:

  1. Easier install (popup box asking to install)
  2. Text display size (font size) adjustment,
  3. Pinch/Squeeze adjusts text size and wraps (does not go off screen edge)
  4. Swipe left/right to go forward/back one chapter
  5. Analytics
  6. Splash screen: image/video/Button to Listen-watch verse/passage of the day
  7. Verse on Image
  8. Asset audio and text for offline
  9. Bookmarks, Highlighting & Share,
  10. Notes

Everything else is much lower in priority.

If analytics are available now, please post how to setup.

May God bless your development, bring more interns and full-time staff to help.

Roger