What is Progressive Web Application?

What is Progressive Web Application?

A progressive web application (PWA) is a mobile-friendly website that behaves like an ordinary native application does, right from its icon on the home screen to how it handles notifications. A PWA uses modern browser features like service workers to provide a great user experience.

Why do we need PWA (Progressive Web Application)?

The traditional websites are becoming obsolete in today’s world because they aren’t optimized for mobiles. This increases the load time and reduces user experience. Progressive web apps overcome these issues. They are fast, responsive, secure, and easy to use.

Understanding the Importance of Progressive Web Application

1. Progressive web applications (PWA) are web apps that look like native mobile apps — they use responsive design and provide push notifications. PWA are built using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript technologies. They work offline automatically without any need to install them. They can be installed from different places and have the capability to work across multiple devices. Due to these characteristics, PWAs make web browsing fast, reliable and engaging.
2. PWAs are natively supported by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. However, many other browsers including Safari and Internet Explorer 11 aren’t yet fully supporting PWA but are still working on making it happen. If you want your app to become a PWA then you should build it using HTML 5 features and make sure it works well in all browsers.
3. PWAs are not only useful for modern browsers but also for older versions of IE. You may have noticed that some websites designed using progressive technology don’t appear slow while others do? Well, this is due to the fact that users who upgraded their browser might not have updated their plugins. Some old plugins include Flash Player plugin, Silverlight plugin and Java plug-in, which could prevent your website from being displayed properly.
4. In addition to its speed, reliability and ease of use, PWAs also offer security benefits over traditional apps. With increased usage of smartphones, people tend to store personal information online which makes their privacy vulnerable. This leads to loss of money and identity theft. PWAs help keep the user data safe and secure while providing convenience and accessibility.
5. The best part about building a PWA is that it takes less time than building a regular app. You just have to focus on designing the UX and making sure your code is clean and organized.
6. To sum up, building a PWA is easy and fun! And, if you want your site to rank higher, you should consider implementing a PWA on your website.

How to develop PWA?

To build a PWA, firstly you have to choose the platform you want to build your app for. You can create a PWA using React Native or Apache Cordova. Both platforms allow creating native applications but run them inside a web view. If you want to make it more secure, you can host your PWA at HTTPS protocol. Once you are done making an app, you’ll need to upload it to Google Play store or Apple store.

Difference between Mobile App & Progressive web Application?

Mobile App – A mobile app is developed using the programming language of iOS (iPhone) or Android (Android). These apps are used to perform functions like music player, shopping cart, etc. In terms of functionality and performance, these apps can’t be compared with other web-based applications.

Progressive Web Application – A progressive web application is built using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Service Worker, HTTPs, JSON API, Push Notification, etc. It’s a combination of web technology and native mobile application. PWAs are more than just websites that look good and work well on smartphone but rather they also offer better user experience than traditional website. With PWA, users don’t need to install any special browser extension and can access them from their home screen as soon as they open the browser.

Benefits of Progressive Web Application

Progressive Web Application is basically any website that can run in both desktop browsers and mobile devices. These apps are designed to respond to user actions on touchscreens and provide a consistent experience across different platforms. 

1. Speed

 The first benefit of using PWA is speed. When your users visit your site from their smartphones or tablets, they expect to see instant loading time. This is where PWAs shine. They use HTML5 features like Service Workers and Push Notifications to load pages instantly. Another benefit is caching. As opposed to traditional websites which require servers to store static content, PWAs cache their contents locally, making the page accessible even if offline.

2. Cross-Platform Compatibility

 Another great benefit of PWAs is cross-platform compatibility. Since mobile internet access has become ubiquitous, almost everyone uses smartphones and tablets these days. However, not all websites are developed well enough to look good on small screens. The issue lies within how they were built. Traditional websites are meant to work only through browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox. With PWAs, they can also work fine in both Android and iOS systems.

Conclusion about Progressive Web Application

PWA’s are progressive web apps that provide offline-capable web experiences, rich graphics and multimedia content, push notifications, and much more. Their use has grown recently with the rise of mobile phones and tablets. PWA’s have become a great way to build responsive applications for small screens while still providing a good user experience. PWA can be used as an alternative to native applications. 

Concluding this post, we want to give some advice regarding how you can approach PWA and what to expect from them. In my opinion, PWAs are the future of web application technology. They provide good performance, can run offline, work everywhere and are user friendly. However, they do not allow the use of many features. These limitations are being addressed by PWAs developers and browser vendors who make them better. To sum things up, we should look forward to the future where our apps are much faster and responsive even if ran off-line.

Have a PWA project in your mind? Deuglo is a pioneering Progressive Web Application Development Company in India that helps you to build highly progressive, responsive and dynamic user experiences.