Here’s one of the best essays I’ve ever read about why progressive web apps are important, how they work, and what impact they have on a business:
PWAs are powerful, effective, fast and app-like.
It’s hard to imagine a mobile web property that could not be significantly improved via PWA implementation. They can also potentially eliminate the need for many “vanity” native apps that exist today.
My only small disagreement with this piece is their use of the term “mobile web.” I know it’s a tiny thing to get persnickety over but my hot take after reading it is this: it’s important to remember that progressive web apps are for everyone, desktop and mobile users alike. I think it’s important to reiterate that there is no mobile web. And that our goal is to be better than native.
Too bad Apple is deliberately dragging their feet fully supporting them in Safari. PWAs risk their sweet sweet App Store revenue after all.
Seconded. PWA’s on Android are so slick, it’s fun to build them. And for the record, this isn’t all on Safari – it’s iOS. MacOS (chrome, safari) does support PWA’s pretty well. Just an example of Apple being the stubborn closed system that they are. If Stevie J was still around they’d have supported PWA years ago. That was actually his idea in the first place.
“it’s important to remember that progressive web apps are for everyone, desktop and mobile users alike”
This is something that needs to be shouted from the mountain top at every opportunity. PWAs are first class citizens on Windows 10, for example. Plus, the offline capabilities (caching, most notably) has the potential to reduce the strain on servers and and bandwidth costs. I am of the opinion that any new web application should be a PWA. Plus, any application that doesn’t need deep native OS integration should probably be a web application – and a PWA.
Pretty cool! While we are even looking for a way to make our web app run smoothly on iOs
PWA’ in respect to platform support is 1 step forward – 2 steps backward.
app manifest is good but doesn’t support themes. On the latest Android, you can theme your app but you can’t apply a theme to the statusbar or the taskbar.
thanks for sharing.