The term ‘Progressive Web App’ is not just a regular technical locution, but it’s a kind of revolution in the digital world. These applications are a cross of the traditional web pages and the mobile applications that the android and ios store hosts.
A progressive web application is the brainchild of a Google engineer called Alex Russell and are highly responsive, secure as well as linkable to URLs. With the coming up of the Progressive web apps, the notion of the ‘future of the digital world’ shifted and now the full linchpin is on the mentioned trendy app.
The engineers are referring the progressive web apps to be the future of web development and here we will tell you five reasons, why the app is so important.
A Smooth User Experience
User experience forms a crucial part when it comes to app development. No one really wants to watch a website or app, loading and loading. People look for responsive pages and fast streaming. So, with these progressive web development apps the users will get the app like experience, when they visit through browsers. When they come back, the page loads instantly. Slow networks are no more reasons to worry for user experience.
Speedy and Efficient Site
Before mentioning how these apps helps in providing a fast and streamlined site, let me introduce you to the concept of ‘Service Workers’. It is basically an event driven script having access to domain wide events and the browser runs it in the background, separates the web page and make those features accessible which do not really need user interaction. Too much of technical language? Well, let me put it in simple words. It is the script which allows to load data instantly, even when the network is slow.
Offline Access
As already mentioned in the above point, service workers are the backbone of progressive web applications. These authorizes content caching, push notifications, background updates and a very important one- offline functionality. This service enables workers offline access to prior visited websites. More and more companies are adhering to the progressive web apps, just because of this amazing offline feature. The service workers are independent of the app and responds directly to push notifications, connectivity changes and network requests.
Extensive user engagement
The progressive web app featured websites holds an option called ‘Allow’ for the users to click, so that it can send notifications. This enables the website to send you notifications and updates, when you are away. If you are thinking, have you ever come across an app like this? Well, yes you have! Google Chrome has this option added to its function, which reads ‘Add to home Screen’. The benefit of this is that by a single tap, you can add the website to your homepage and due to the link adding feature of PWA, the app will get cached and you will be able to directly go from the home screen to the app.
It’s Beneficial for Both the User and the Developer
The regular thing that a user does is visit the app store, look for the app and then installs it. This, in turn consumes memory of the device. But, with PWA the user no more needs to visit the app store or install it. For the developers too, PWA is beneficial as they do not have to make mobile apps for play stores and then wait for either approval or rejection, followed by bug fixes.
This was just a brief background as to why progressive web apps are the future of web development. There are more insights to it and more features will eventually get added to it in the coming days.