Progressive web apps have been changing the landscape of website development in recent years. Progressive web apps are mobile applications that are developed through the web using standard web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. They are essential in bridging the gap between mobile apps and websites and offer the best in which both platforms have to offer.
Some of the features that a progressive web appshould have include reliability, speed, and engagement. These features are explained below:
- The application is reliable meaning that it can provide interfaces to the users even with poor or no internet connection.
- The application is fast that it loads instantly, thus providing smooth experiences to the users when they are loading their content.
- The application can provide an immersive user experience when it is engaging the userâs equivalent to what native applications can provide.
As a developer, it is necessary to incorporate the web app manifest and service worker while developing a progressive web application. A web app manifest is a file that notifies the device on how the application should behave during installation and contains properties such as icons, displays, orientations, and background color. The service worker is an essential component on the progressive web applications as it helps in dictating how offline capabilities work. This is done through caching strategies such as cache only, cache and update, cache update and refresh, and embedded fallback.Â
There are several advantages that accrue from using progressive web apps. Firstly, they can be used even when there is poor to no internet connection, thus making them reliable for users of such applications. Secondly, progressive web apps have improved performance compared to regular applications. There are no installation or updates required in progressive web apps as they are done over the web. Progressive web apps also use lessdata.