Preview routine

The preview routine is a feature within Firebase Hosting that lets developers preview changes to their website or web app without affecting the live version. This is particularly useful for testing new features, design updates, or any modifications that could potentially impact the user experience.

When we enable the preview routine, Firebase Hosting creates a unique preview URL for our changes. This URL can be shared with team members and stakeholders, or even used for personal testing, allowing us to gather feedback and ensure everything is functioning as intended before deploying to our live website.

Benefits of using the preview routine

  • Risk reduction: Testing modifications before deploying lowers the chance of introducing bugs, mistakes, or other problems that can have a negative influence on the user experience.

  • Collaboration: By sharing the preview URL with team members, the preview routine makes it simple for multiple stakeholders to review and provide feedback on the improvements. This enables a collaborative review process, allowing team members to collectively assess and comment on the changes.

  • Quality assurance: The preview routine helps preserve the general quality of our web app or website by identifying and fixing any possible issues before they become visible to the public.

  • User-centric testing: We can make sure that the user experience is consistent and user-friendly across various devices and browsers by previewing updates.

Implementing the preview routine

We’ve deployed our web app, and now we’re looking to implement a preview routine for testing and validating changes before they go live. To activate this routine, we’ll explore how to upload and test modifications efficiently. In the context of web development, deploying often implies changes are live. However, in this scenario, we’re referring to deploying changes specifically for testing in a preproduction environment. This ensures that we thoroughly review and test updates before making them publicly available

Activating the preview mode

To activate the preview mode, we run the following command:

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