Why Progressive Web Apps Are Considered the Future of the Modern Web? ────────────────────────────────────────
Overview Progressive Web App or (PWA) is a modern development technology that uses web capacities to fulfill an app-like experience. PWAs differ from traditional applications as they are a combination of regular pages (or websites) and mobile applications. While they are still websites, they bring the best web browsing and mobile experience features to the users. Essentially, a PWA is a web app that maintains a native app flavor allowing users to access the application instantly.
Web Applications vs. Progressive Web Applications Web applications, or regular web applications, are client-side applications that run directly on a web browser. Although they are much more useful than websites, they have their own problems. In case you are not recognizing the difference between web apps and sites, web apps vary from website because web apps look and feel like native apps. Progressive web apps are the next generation of web applications. They work equivalently as native apps, using native improvements to the device. For example, progressive web applications can use features like offline cache, push notifications, etc. as well as native features like camera, etc.
Why Do We Require Progressive Web Applications? Native apps, on the one hand, work amazingly quickly and reliably even in situations like slow or no connectivity. But on the other hand, there are websites and web apps, which are slow and do not perform well without good network conditions. This is the reason why most people prefer native apps only.
Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP, is a project promoted by Google that was started to solve slow connection problems. This was done especially on smartphones, and to implement a more enjoyable user experience for mobile device users. But, AMP development does not resolve network problems. Plus, it doesn't speed up load times as fast as native apps, and again it has remarkable limitations in achieving this speed. For these reasons, we need Progressive web applications. PWA development provides the fittest and possible user experience on slow or no network conditions. For example, a PWA may display a progress screen when loading content or a dash screen when there is no Web connectivity.
Features of Progressive Web Apps Progressive web applications have a number of obvious features that set them apart from their simpler counterparts, namely, web applications (or simpler ones: websites): ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
Sensitive - Works on all devices of any screen size. Offline first - Charge on slow networks or charge even when there is no network. Application Sensation - Watch and interact like a native app. Modern - Updates by themselves, almost transparently. Secure - Use HTTPS to load page resources. Searchable - Leveraged content for search engines. Re-closable - Participate again, for example, through notifications. Installable - It can be placed on the home screen. Linkable - Load the page like the app, but with a URL.
Are Progressive Web Applications Our Future? Although progressive web apps cannot resolve all our app problems or replace native apps in the future, progressive web apps do play an important role, thanks to their benefits that far outweigh their limitations. And with almost every major platform starting to support PWAs, it is not far away that we will see PWAs everywhere.