Release Notes - PWA Forced Updates

Overview

Linkidex now displays an alert banner if the application needs to be reloaded. Simply refreshing the browser or clicking ‘refresh’ on the alert banner at the earliest convenience will fix the issue.

New Alert Banner Example

Details - PWAs & Updates

Linkidex is a progressive web application (PWA). This means you can download Linkidex to your phone or tablet and it will act like it is a native application, while in reality its just being run by your internet browser. PWAs are great because they work offline and don’t require any additional permissions to function. Mozilla has a great article with more information about PWAs, and if you want to download Linkidex, you can find instructions here.

The problem this update solves is that if you download a PWA, the PWA needs to know when to update itself. If it always tries to update itself then part of the benefit of being a PWA is lost (why download something if you are going to keep re-downloading it every time you use it?) If it never updates itself, then what happens when Linkidex releases new features? Your downloaded version will forever be out of date!

There is a happy medium, which is to tell Linkidex to update on a user’s device only when an update to our codebase has occurred. That functionality is what this release has implemented.

Email me david@linkidex.com with questions / concerns / feedback.

~ David