Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web apps that are enhanced to look and feel more like native apps. Responsive Design is just one part of this. Offline support, a home screen icon, animations, accessing camera, accessing geolocation, synchronizing data in the background and push notifications can all be done in a modern web app.
What Makes a PWA?
- Reliability - Load fast and provide offline functionality
- Fast - Immediate response to user actions
- Engaging - Should look and feel like a native app (push notifications)
These features should be introduced using progressive enhancement techniques so that the app is also useful in older browsers.
PWAs vs Native Mobile Apps
- in 2015 usage was 87% native apps, 13% mobile web apps but these numbers have since steadily been moving towards mobile web apps as browsers become more capable. 80% of time spent in native apps is spent in the top 3 apps on a device.
- Learn multiple languages, APIs and programming environments.
- The average user installs 0 apps a month.
- A huge advantage of web pages is that you never have to actively install anything. This has been proven by visitors on web pages vs visitors loading an app.
- Native apps have better access to device features but in general far less reach to users
- A traditional web page has very limited device access but unlimited reach to users via Google searches etc.
- A PWA tries to get the best of both worlds. It can access a lot of device features while still having unlimited reach.