A progressive web application (PWA, for its acronym) is an application that uses modern web capabilities to provide users with an experience similar to that of a “native” mobile application. These applications meet certain requirements, which are implemented on servers, are accessible through URLs and indexed by search engines.
This can work perfectly together with other applications to provide multiple deployment destinations for all your users. You can even implement your application as PWA, even as a native application, and take advantage of both channels.
For web designers, this opens a world of incredible possibilities, but also a series of completely new challenges.
What you need?
To be considered a progressive web application, your application must be:
Progressive: That works for all users, regardless of the browser they are using, since they are designed with progressive improvements, like mobile applications.
Responsive: That suits any platform, whether desktop, mobile, tablet or other devices.
Independent connectivity: With service improvements to work offline or in low-quality networks.
Simulate an App: Different models can be used to provide interactions and navigation that resemble those of a mobile app.
Innovative: That is constantly being updated by servers.
Secure: browse through HTTPS to avoid espionage and ensure that the content has not been tampered with.
Visible: They are identifiable as “applications” thanks to the W3C manifestos and the scope of the registry that allows search engines to find them (SEO).
Promotes engagement: Makes users interact and stay interested through push notifications.
Installable: allows users to “keep” applications on the home screen without the hassle of an app store.
Linkable: easily shared through the URL and does not require complex installation.
Web applications for all
In simple terms, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and other companies are working on a new and modern web application standard. Even the powerful Apple is walking towards the same place and implementing support for this new wave. While these are web applications, they behave more like native applications.
Like existing web applications, they are hosted directly on the associated website. For web design, this is an advantage. Developers can update them directly on their web server without sending those updates to several different application stores, and the same application will run on all browsers and platforms.
As a user, when you install a progressive web application, you will get a start screen, a taskbar or a desktop shortcut that starts the application – depending on your platform. The application will load quickly and could include offline support, automatic notifications, background synchronization support, and other modern improvements. Web design around the world celebrates these applications!
PWA also uses existing web technologies to access location services, webcam and other similar features that are normally associated with native applications. Of course, applications ask for authorization for this before they can access.
What’s Next?
It is not just about making web applications a little more pleasant or colorful. It is about establishing a new standard for installable applications that are compatible with all platforms. That could mean some amazing events in the near future for web design.
By implementing these types of applications, Google could enable services such as Gmail and Google Calendar to function as PWA. This means that they will run as native style applications in Windows 10 and will be included in the Windows Store. This would greatly help solve the problem of the Windows Store application, because so far, Google does not want to be compatible with the Windows universal platform (UWP). Other developers who did not want to create separate UWP applications could be compatible with Windows 10 with native-style PWA.
Developers would have an easier way to make their web applications work in a more powerful and integrated way on a wide variety of devices without having to be moving from one application store to another. Web applications that work on any platform could compete better with applications that work on a single platform. A company that has limited resources to create a single application could create a PWA and make everything condense there, instead of creating separate applications for iOS, Android, Windows, and the web.
Are you ready for the web design of the future?
CG Media – Brooklyn SEO Expert