PWA Studio / Starter Goals and Roadmap

[jgw96]

As you may have seen, the PWABuilder team recently released two new projects:

• The PWA Studio VSCode Extension: https://github.com/pwa-builder/pwa-studio
• The PWA Starter: https://github.com/pwa-builder/pwa-starter

May 31st update

Making some changes based on latest analytics. These changes affect v1.1.0+.

This discussion is meant to clearly state the goals for these projects going forward and set out a roadmap of how to accomplish them.

Goals

• Greater simplicity
• Greater flexibility
• Quality

Notes

Want to start releasing and talking about starter + studio as one thing, still making it clear however that studio is not strictly needed for the starter.

• Integrate Developers should have a rich documentation experience #2669 into this plan

Roadmap

Milestones

v0.3.0:

• Release Month: March
• Bug Fixes:
  • [VSCode] Generate Manifest View tooltip rendered of screen #2626
  • vscode: [Bug] When opening the extension a warning is thrown about the syntax of the snippets file #2424
• Features:
  • [FEATURE] Code Extension: Help Command #2514
  • PWA Starter: Move to Vite based build #2670

v1.0.0:

• Release Month: May
• Bug Fixes:
  • [VSCODE] "Start New PWA" command should ask for project location #2635
  • [VSCODE] Long activation times for PWA Studio #2624
• Features:
  • [VSCODE] The validation tab should allow opening the appropriate file if found #2630
  • [VSCODE] Add a snippet or command to add link and script tags to index pages for manifest and service worker #2628
  • [VSCODE] Manifest Generation 2.0 #2671

v1.1.0:

• Release Month: June
• Bug Fixes:
  • [BUG] PWA Studio extension in VS Code reports all URLs as invalid #3034
• Features:
  • [VSCODE] Support Meta Oculus platform #3009
  • [VSCODE] Manifest generator tooltips should provide info instead of opening browser #2629
  • [VSCODE / Starter] Service Workers should be greatly simplified #2672
  • [STARTER] Add support for custom base URLs through Vite #3010
  • [VSCODE] Analytics: Group packaging tries by URL #3036

v1.2.0:

• Release Month: July
• Bug Fixes:
  • room for bugs from previous releases
• Features:
  • [vscode] Add Screenshots Generator #2570
  • [VSCODE] Publish Checklist #2673
  • [VSCODE] Directly call Azure Static Web Apps CLI #2674
  • [VSCODE] Starter Add-Ons using PWA Studio #2675

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--- tasks from below will be moved above as we work through the above milestones ---

• Documentation:

  • More tutorials and walkthroughs
  • Framework specific tutorials and walkthroughs
  • Better contributing guide
  • Simple open source slide deck for the community (and potentially internal) to use to present PWABuilder
  • Integrate 30DaysOfPWA content into PWA Studio

• PWA Studio:

  • re-evaluate how we handle publishing (other publishing platforms)

  • - Service Worker: 
    

    • Adding a service worker to an existing web app should not use Workbox by default. Instead, the default Service Worker should be a “vanilla” Service Worker. We should then prompt the user to learn more about the workbox flow for a more production ready application. The workbox flow will then be a separate command. For apps using the starter, Vite will be used to generate the SW and PWA Studio should recognize this.
  • Manifest:
    • Adding to index.html should be a snippet or fully automatic
    • Can generate screenshots
    • Clean up form
    • Form or fancy snippet? Fancy snippet may be more useful and simpler
  • Getting Started:
    • PWA Studio should recognize when the user is using the starter. This opens it up for starter-specific UI / actions
    • “add on packs” for popular setups. Adds everything needed in one command to become a PWA
      • Add on pack for React to make React apps created with create-react-app a valid PWA (potentially community led)
      • Same as above for Vue (potentially community led)
      • Same as above for Angular (potentially community led)
  • Packaging / Publishing:
    • Publish checklist
    • Directly call Static Web Apps extension

• PWA Starter:

  • Can get started directly in the browser
  • Update to Vite based build
  • Starter add-ons using PWA Studio:
    • Command / snippet to add dark mode support
    • Command / Snippet for dual-screen CSS
    • Command / Snippet to add Window Controls Overlay
    • Command to add simple testing setup with Playwright
    • Command to add other UI web component libraries such as Shoelace
  • Look into no-build option

[jgw96]

Updated this today based on learnings since I created this discussion