In this fastest-growing technological era, it is important to update ourselves as much as possible to compete with others. Like us the technology also fighting its own battle to hold its position in the marketplace. In this line, we are going to focus on a concept named PWA
Why PWA in 2022?
Birth and fall :
It's true that the ideology of PWA emerged way back in 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the visionary idea, that "a web application which looks and behaves exactly like a native application" along with the launch of the iPhone. But the thought of focusing more on Safari browsers for PWA over IOS apps made Steve a bit worried. After a few months, the concept of SDK applications surged so rapidly and grounded the PWA thoughts down, also it gained more profits and a huge success for the companies on that day.
Come back :
When technologies made the web more reshaped and responsive in late 2012, the need for other technologies also grown up. In 2015, Chrome developer Alex Russel and designer Frances Berriman coined the name for their idea as "Progressive Web Application", which supercharged Apple's idea. Unlike then, the Modern technologies were advanced now and in early 2016, google provided the first hints for PWA. In the same year, Firefox introduced support for service workers which is a supportive pillar for PWA. Besides, that big giants like Microsoft gave their hands to support PWA and contributed from their side.
Milestones :
In 2016, Google provided the first hints for PWA. and Flipkart India’s largest eCommerce platform changed its path to PWA. AliExpress also increased its conversion rate for new users by 104% with a new Progressive Web App.
In 2017, Twitter launched Twitter Lite which significantly increases engagement and reduced data consumption by 70%.
In 2018, Uber launches m.uber and achieved great success. By 2019, PWAs were supported by desktop versions of most browsers, including Microsoft Edge.
The companies which are adopted the PWA technology earlier achieved huge success in their respective fields by decreasing load time and data consumption, and increasing engagement and performance.
After seeing this much growth and profits gained from PWA by other companies, many stores supported and published Progressive Web Apps in their stores such as the Google Play Store, Apples App Store, and even Microsoft store.
Current status :
PWA contributed more to the success of the companies which were adopted it. The growth of PWA is not stopped even in 2022 and it's a still-emerging technology used by startups and small-scale companies. In 2022 most modern browsers were already supporting PWA's which improves the features and cross-platform ability of PWA. The feature includes
Media Capture : The media Capture feature lets apps use the camera and mic of a device
Contact Picker : The Contact Picker API allows apps to pick user's contacts after permission has been granted from the user
File System : Access to the file system of the user's device
Audio Controls : The Media session API allows the app to display media playback controls on the device's lock screen
AR and VR : Augmented reality enables apps to place Virtual objects in reality and Virtual reality enables apps to place real objects in Virtual one
Orientation : The DeviceOrientationEvent gives information about the physical orientation of the device by accessing the device info
Motion Senses : The DeviceMotionEvent gives information about the changing motion of the device using in-built sensors
Network Info : The NetworkInformation API provides info about the device connection and allows the app to function based on network quality
Geolocation : The Geolocation API enables users to share their location with application
Sharing : The Web share API invokes the native share mechanism of the device and allows users to share text, links, or files
Vibrations : The Vibration API enables web app to make a mobile device vibrate
Bluetooth : The Web Bluetooth API enables apps to connect to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices with reading and writing access
Payments : The Payment Request API provides a browser-based method to enable users to make payments on the web
Notifications : The Notifications API enables web apps to display or push notifications, even when the app is not active state
Authentication : Web Authentication API enables password-less authentication via your device's fingerprint or face-id or USB security key
Sensor Access : The PWA can access the device sensors like NFC, Fingerprint and many more and enables features like Wake lock, Reading NFC tags
Audio Capture : Audio capture enables the feature to capture the audio or your speech and visualize the audio using Web Audio API or recognize your voice and perform tasks. It also supports voice synthesis which read out the content on the screen to you
To view, the permissions allowed for a PWA, open the browser and navigate to site settings and manage the permissions. For example in desktop chrome browser chrome://settings/content
Having these many abilities and features, Progressive Web App is still holding its place against Native and Web Applications.
What is PWA in short?
A web application that can be installed on a device (mobile or desktop) and behave just like a native application is called Progressive Web Apps. This app contains advantages of both Native and Web Applications.
Native Apps : A native app is one that is intended and built for a specific platform, such as iPhone or Android or Microsoft Windows Mobile OS by using their proprietary code libraries and accessing their available hardware features
Web Apps : A web application (or web app) is an application that runs on a web server, unlike native apps which run over Operating System it runs over browsers. Web applications are accessed by the user through a web browser with an active network connection
Above are the comparison of Native vs Web vs PWA applications. As you see PWA has advantages of both Native and Web apps. This is the reason why PWA was providing consistent success to the developers and companies. We have seen most of the features and advantages of PWA let's see the disadvantages
App Stores : No more dedicated app stores for PWA, but most of the popular stores were already started to publish PWA apps. In addition to that, it has SEO too.
Browsers : The PWA's were browser-dependent, but nowadays all devices have modern browsers which support most of the features
Security : Even though it is connected to the internet there is TLS and HTTPS support, which wraps HTTP data and creates a secure way to communicate and we can use Service Worker effectively for more security.
Summary :
Even though the PWA has some disadvantages it's not a dead-end technology, it was still emerging rapidly. More and more startups and companies showing their interest in PWA, as the future, relies on this technology, why do we need to stay back, let's learn as much as we could. I hope you guys gained some knowledge about what is PWA? and its story. We'll see how to create one on upcoming blogs, until then stay tuned.
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