Why am I excited about the web and the future?

For the longest time, I just wanted to create software that I could share with the world. I wanted to express my ideas, explore the technology available and tinker with ideas.

If I wanted to create a webpage that had a button that unlocked my front door, why not? Sure, it's not the most intelligent of ideas.

"Native" applications are often writting in the language that's most compatible with the operating system (like Objective-C or Swift for Mac, Java for Android, C# for Windows). I've had many ideas for mini applications that scratch a particular itch I have, but I've been denied because my knowledge only extended so far as what the browser could do. For instance: the browser couldn't add a system menu item to my Mac.

This state is changing on multiple fronts.

Firstly, the native desktop is being opened up with the likes of Electron. This is nothing particularly to do with the web, but more to do with an environment akin to a browser that also has access to the operating system. Electron allows me to realise small software solutions that I would otherwise be denied.

There's a growing number of serious businesses using Electron to base their desktop experience, including Microsoft's VS Code, Slack, Atom and Wordpress.

Electron isn't web, but the technology is the same (and essentially V8 and Blink…I believe), and it's a pretty exciting prospect to be able to use the knowledge we gain from view source to create cross platform native capable applications.

But then, there's also the web and browsers…

The first scripting I ever wrote was using Windows Shell Scripting, creating a Windows HTA to build a image preview tool. This was regular HTML, but executed by a special extension of Windows that allowed my code to run as a stand alone application.

Much later came PhoneGap, which allowed me to first class mobile applications using regular HTML and JavaScript.

But both of these, and everything in between, including HTML5's Appcache, were halfway houses. They always felt a little…uncanny.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA for short) are, to me, feels like the culmination of decades of progress. All the best ideas brought together and given a name. All the browsers, barring one, are making huge progress on the supporting technologies that make a PWA.

For context, a PWA is a label for a website that satisfies a number technology features, typically including secure transport via HTTPS, instant and reliable loading via Service Workers, responsive to the device via media queries and more.

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