There have been several turning points in the history of the web world. These turning points have literally affected the way we developers create a web app. The way web apps are deployed and the way the users’ experience them, everything has been transformed. AJAX was one of such turning points in the history of the web platform that brought a profound shift in web engineering. It not only make web applications more responsive but also offered tough competition to conventional desktop apps.
However, if you would have noticed the ‘Mobile World’ experience, native apps profoundly capture it whereas web apps hardly come that close. Keeping the behavior of mobile users and their needs, PWAs came into existence. Progressive web apps also have discovered the right setup capabilities that a browser come with and has made mobile web apps as high performant as native apps. The progressive web app has offered the users an experience that they have been looking for ages. Progressive web applications are truly powerful that offer a bleeding edge over other competing apps.
Let us take a quick sneak peek on why Progressive Web Apps are so immersive, so engaging and so performing. Just to inform the so-called ‘so’ refers to high in the case of PWAs.
Immersive
Undoubtedly native app offers the best experience but then it has its own shortcomings. Drawbacks of installation are some of the many issues that the users meet every now and then. The issue of installation the users faced during the access to mobile apps led to poor user experiences. This issue has been tackled by PWAs. It is not necessary that you have unsurpassed network connectivity to access progressive web apps. Even in poor network connectivity, you can experience web apps. Even in your offline mode and with no installation hassles you can access progressive web apps. All thanks to service workers that have replaced the approaches made by AppCache, LocalStorage, and IndexedDB. Service workers offer scriptable network proxy in the browser that handles your queries and requests and gives appropriate response even in offline mode.
The full-screen feature offers a standalone experience that can be said to be truly immersive to the end users of progressive web apps. Add to home screen is like a cherry on the cake that allows the user to choose the progressive web apps and add it to the home screen. The high-quality icon allows the user to use the app whenever they want. Another improvement in the field of web apps are the Splash screens that improve the launch experience. This was a luxury that users of native apps experienced earlier and web unfortunately never had that, there was just a Blank Page at the starting but now with Splash screen, the performance of web app has increased to the next level.
Engaging
With progressive web apps, businesses can re-engage with their users which were earlier a challenge. The introduction of API or web push API that has the capability to send a push notification to a user even in offline mode or even when the browser is closed has helped businesses to overcome the challenge of engaging with their end users. With the help of service worker progressive web apps have moved beyond browser lifetime.
High performance
Mobile apps have always been considered a high performing application that takes less time to render data. Yet they need uninterrupted data connectivity to offer what the user wants. PWAs have lived up to the expectation of the end users, even with low network connectivity and low data consumption it can offer efficient and sufficient data. Websites face consistent performance a huge challenge today. With progressive web apps, we identify that significant improvement has been done in this field as they offer same consistent performance on different mobile devices. It was one of the multiple bottlenecks that website had. With PWAs, the problem has been met and resolved. In other words, progressive web app offers consistent performance irrespective of the mobile devices that the user uses.
In conclusion, I would say that the users or the customers are going to get a treat with progressive web apps as they get to push the limits of web platform in their phones.
