Editor’s note: Progressiveness is becoming a new quality standard for web development. Below, ScienceSoft describes the characteristics of progressive web apps and lists the benefits they offer to businesses. Specializing in software engineering for demanding industries, including healthcare, insurance, and investment, our web app development team can build you a secure, reliable PWA.
After years of its existence, the term “progressive web app” is still a popular buzzword. To this day, many people find it difficult to draw a line between a website and a regular web app, so a new, strange type of web apps seems to cause even more cons.
Ironically, ‘inconvenience’ is exactly what progressive web apps are intended to address. Their entire concept focuses on making users’ web experience easier, more satisfying and reliable, regardless of the conditions.
Starbucks’ 2x increase in active users and an even rate of desktop and mobile conversions. Uber is on 2G networks. Pinterest’s 44% increase in user generated ad revenue and 60% increase in engagement. All this success is thanks to progressive web apps.
In case you want to know more about the offer of progressive web apps (let’s also call them PWAs for short), this article is for you.
What makes a web app ‘progressive’?
A PWA is still a web app, but with some improvements listed below. These enhancements can be considered special defining attributes that distinguish a PWA from a common web app:
Service workers
Service Workers do the work of proxy servers between an app, a browser and a network. They are responsible for caching PWA data on first load and making an app available for offline use. In Chrome, specifically, service worker settings also allow pre-caching and cache management.
Since networks are now almost everywhere, and everyone is always connected, it may seem unimportant whether an app can work offline or not. However, this feature is not only about being available offline, but rather about being able to perform well in all network conditions. Slow speed or low signal is not that uncommon, and properly designed PWAs with registered service workers ensure smooth navigation even under such circumstances.
HTTP/2
If you take a closer look at the address bar of a PWA, you’ll notice ‘https’ instead of an older and increasingly common ‘http’. This is because progressive web apps use new HTTP/2 that require encrypted HTTPS connection. (But, it doesn’t mean that all Website with ‘https’ in the address bar uses HTTP/2 and not HTTP/1.)
With HTTP/2, all data is cut into pieces and transferred via TCP stream, which is almost 80% faster than HTTP/1. This test shows the time difference in building an image on a page over HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.
The positive effect of HTTP/2 is even more evident on image/animation-heavy websites. That’s why many online stores and business card websites are redesigning their pages as progressive web apps. While ensuring fast data transfer, PWAs allow them to take advantage of quality illustrations to capture the attention of potential customers.
Progressive Web App Manifesto
A manifest is a JSON file associated with a progressive web app directory. The file contains various settings that define a PWA’s icon, its background and theme colors, font, splash screen design, as well as initial orientation for mobile devices.
What’s more, a manifest can be configured to send a request to install a PWA on a user’s mobile device (or save it as a bookmark in a desktop browser). If such an offer is accepted, a progressive web app will be given official permission to join the ‘Apps’ list in the settings menu. From that moment it is fully functional as a normal mobile app. But, unlike native apps, it only weighs about a hundred kilobytes.
Push notifications
Normally, when a user opens a progressive web app in a desktop or mobile browser, the app asks if they want to subscribe to notifications. After choosing to subscribe, the user will receive a personal ID that will link their notifications to the content they see.
PWA’s push notifications exist thanks to Push Manager and Push API. The manager regularly checks the state of an app in passive mode and sends an update to either a browser or, if the app is already installed on the user’s device, the OS.
development benefits
Thanks to all their enhanced features, progressive web apps can offer performance to rival that of both hybrid and natural apps. However, what makes it a sensible choice to choose web application development from a PWA rather than the other types of web and mobile apps?
Discoverability
Because progressive web apps reside in browsers (at least until they gain a user’s trust and are installed on a mobile device), they are as easy to search engine optimize and, as a result, discover, as any website or normal web app.
For some time, PWA fans have wanted to see progressive web apps in Google Play or a separate store. In December 2017, Google promised that by mid-2018 Chrome apps will be replaced by PWAs. The promise has yet to be fulfilled, but it would definitely attract a new audience to progressive web apps and expand their already wide discoverability.
Cross-browserness
The functionality of progressive web apps is 100% supported by all the most popular browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Google and Microsoft have popularized PWAs for some time: Google offers toolkits for creating and auditing progressive web apps in Chrome, while Windows 10 has been reported to become fully compatible with progressive web apps by the end of 2018. (Which is true.)
Apple has given PWAs a cold shoulder for a while: Safari treated PWAs as regular web apps and did not allow home screen installation, push notifications or cache. As of August 2017, Apple has promised to show more support for Progressive Web Apps, and both the PWA Manifest and Server Worker for Safari have been put into development. Since iOS 14.8, released in April 2021, Apple has acknowledged the existence of PWAs both in word and in reality.
Cheap and fast development
With the advantages of PWAs, you can guarantee high performance of your apps even with the minimal investment. Furthermore, when you create a progressive web app, you get a desktop website, an Android app, and (if you use Cordova as a wrapper) an iOS app: a 3-in-1 solution.
conclusion
A few years ago, the PWA statistics website featured success stories from just a few big brands and many niche IT companies. Now, when Apple finally gave in to the PWA concept, the number of success stories from world-renowned companies is overwhelming. Easy to develop, discover, navigate and install, progressive web apps offer a new web experience for desktop and mobile users of all platforms.