Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are here! 🚀
Hi, *|USERNAME|*!
Web apps historically have been known for being sluggish, lacking necessary features, falling apart when the network connectivity gets spotty, looking strange on smaller screens, and so on. There are several reasons for this. One big reason is technical. HTML, CSS, and JS simply didn't have sorts of functionality to support rich app experiences, nor were they performant enough to meet the needs of users accustomed to blazing fast response times. These shortcomings really meant that web apps would never really go beyond something cheap and mediocre that developers can quickly crank out. This wasn't an outcome that web developers wanted.
This certainly wasn't an outcome Google, Samsung, Firefox, Microsoft, and others vested in the success of the web ecosystem wanted either. Enter Progressive Web Apps, commonly just referred to as PWA:
What PWAs did was reset everyone's expectations on what web apps can and should be. At this point, the technical limitations that held web apps back had been addressed. What was missing was this strong reinforcement of guidance and best practices around performance, accessibility, responsive/adaptive design, security, and more. The goal was to encourage web developers to pull out all the roadblocks in order to provide users with a good user experience. And provide many developers did!
Today, many web apps you use frequently are PWAs:
Some popular examples include Twitter Lite, Starbucks, Google Maps, Uber, and more. Not only do these examples adhere closely to the PWA principles of focusing on providing users with a great user experience, they also hit the right technical checkboxes for providing additional metadata and ensuring a seamless offline/low-connectivity experience. To learn more about what goes into a PWA and more, check out my latest article What are Progressive Web Apps (PWA)?
TILL NEXT TIME!
As always, before I leave you to it, I would love to hear from you on things I can do better, topics you'd like me to write about, and more. Don't be shy! The easiest way to contact me is via Twitter or by posting on the forums (like you used to 10 years ago!)
Cheers,
Kirupa 😃