Introducing PWA Pong 🕹️🎮 A Progressive Web App of the Classic Atari Game
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Today I am excited to announce the release of PWA Pong, a progressive web app version of the classic Pong game. I chose Pong because I recently talked with students in India, sharing how I started my development career.
You can experience the PWA Pong game right now.
As I prepared for this engagement it occurred to me my fascination, like most of us, started when I was young playing video games. I traced this experience back to a visit to a family friend with a brand new Atari 6500 home entertainment system.
I remember that night, playing pong on their giant living room floor television set. I was not alone the entire house, full of guest, was mezmorized by the game on the screen, pong.
To celebrate my presentation to the students i decided to find a version of Pong I could upgrade. Thanks to GitHub I quickly located a suitable version I could easily upgrade to a progressive web app.
15 Minutes later the first version of PWA Pong was ready to go!
Just like other progressive web apps I have been launching this is a very simple application. I simply added a web manifest file and basic service worker. I am also hosting the site in AWS using the CloudFront CDN service. AWS offers free SSL certificates that are easy to provision and install.
I generated the Pong home screen icon array using PWA Builder. The service worker was copied from the other projects and of course customized for the pong resources.
The source code is available on GitHub. The original project was created over 8 years ago. Right now the app only works on desktops. I will make updates as I have time to make it work on touch devices.
I invite you to enjoy the game and reference the source code to upgrade your existings sites. I also encourage you to find other apps or sites on GitHub you could also fork and upgrade.
Let me know what you create.
I hope this help you see how you can safely upgrade any existing web site to be a progressive web app. My simple PWAs like Pong should serve as references to get you started.
Remember upgrading your site to a progressive web is a journey. And according to the Chineese saying all journeys start with a single step. Take the first step today!