Every website deserves a service worker
Blog post from LogRocket
Websites should function offline to ensure a seamless user experience, especially on mobile devices with unreliable connections. By employing service workers, developers can enable offline capabilities, caching assets and frequently visited pages, thereby maintaining functionality even when network access is limited. Service workers act as intermediaries between the website, browser, and network, allowing interception of requests and responses to serve cached content. This ensures that users can still access vital site elements and avoid disruptions. Implementing service workers involves a lifecycle of events, such as installation and activation, where assets are cached and the website is prepared for offline operation. Various caching strategies can be employed, such as serving from cache with network fallback or updating cached content in the background. These strategies can be tailored to suit the nature of the website's resources. Ultimately, integrating service workers not only supports offline functionality but also enhances the user experience by making websites faster and more reliable, akin to native apps, while also facilitating features like push notifications.