Introduction:
Have you imagined a world where there is no dependency on App stores for native applications? A Progressive Web Application is an answer for that, and no doubt it is one of the most significant technological developments made on web content in recent times.
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) is a combination of web and native mobile apps. In simpler words, it is “web application using progressive enhancement”. PWA uses the best technology to make your website load faster and with better performance. It provides features such as push notifications, offline mode, installing to the home screen and more. Concisely, it is a technology that adds mobile app functionality or features to the website.
Currently, all the mobile applications need a play store to access the application and install on any device. On the contrary, the PWA applications can be accessed directly without altering the user experience.
Let us consider the popular applications like Facebook and Twitter, both these applications have a separate app for mobile instead of installing it from the play store it can be accessed in any web browser. In this scenario, web applications and mobile applications have the same content but look, feel, user experience, usage of internet, and ease of use varies inherently.
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) have effectively bridged the gap between mobile apps and websites, offering the best from both worlds. PWA fulfils the user wishes of experiencing:
- Sleek mobile experience
- Push notifications
- Offline Mode
- Adding the main screen of the smartphone in PWA’s.
Premier companies have jumped on the PWA vogue and released their own web applications with native functionalities. Twitter saw a tremendous growth of 75% increase in tweets when they used PWA technology. Also, Twitter Lite loads under 3 seconds for a repeat visit on a slow network.
Many organizations have already implemented PWA and have a high success rate, good user interaction, lower memory consumption. Companies like Alibaba, Book My Show, Trivago, Pinterest, OLX, Starbucks, Wego, Twitter Lite, Forbes, Pure formulas, Make My Trip has implemented PWA and have achieved 50 % success rate in their business offering and found a benefit when PWA is used.
Benefits of PWA
Now that we have learnt what PWA is and how the Twitter application saw a tremendous increase in tweets by using PWA. Let’s have a look into the benefits of PWAs.
- Offline Mode– One of the best features of PWA is its contents can be cached even on offline mode. This solves one of the major issues for the development of any product, and thus user stays connected when there is no internet or low bandwidth which leads to higher user engagement rates and higher revenue.
- Improved Performance– PWA’s quick response and instant loading capability is due to the use of ‘service workers’ technology, and its cache mechanism
- Ease of Access– When you want any app to be in your phone all you need is to go to play store, download the app which leads to memory space issue (when there are many applications in your phone) and increases download time. So, no play store is equal to no download time and memory space issues. PWA requires only the link which can be shared to users to install the applications. An Added advantage of using PWA technology is that the user can still access the application simply by saving it on the home screen with its brand name, which results in higher improved user interaction.
- No installation and manual updates required – Let’s consider if a user wants to use Twitter’s progressive web app, the user doesn’t need to install it from the play store/Appstore. Instead, the user can access by visiting mobile. twitter. com and log in without any interruptions and delays.                                          Let’s take another scenario where Twitter (native application) needs an update, and the user must visit play store/ Appstore, and needs a good bandwidth internet connection to get its updated version. So, if a user uses Twitter (PWA technology), it reduces the manual efforts of updating its application as the backend takes care and thus delivers a seamless experience to its customer. Any companies which use PWA technology can expect less customer support queries from the end-users.
- Low Development cost:The Special feature of PWA is it promises to develop one single application for multiple platforms that can be accessed from any devices. Thus, it helps in overall cost reduction.
Conclusion:
Any transition of any software or technology is a pain and has many challenges. While transiting native applications to PWA there are more challenges like battery drainage, PWA is not a website it’s a technology that uses a combination of web and native mobile applications which needs to fit on the screen and across all the OS and platforms. IOS versions (less than 13) does not support PWA technology.
Apple treats it as HTML apps/web apps and not PWA. Also, PWA application needs ‘React’ and ‘Angular JS’ and these both frameworks can be implanted and customized in the making PWA. Having said that there comes performance issue as Java Script uses ‘Single-threaded’ programming language and it becomes more difficult with certain important features such as Bluetooth, proximity sensors, ambient light, advanced camera controls and others to access it, and there is not much clarity on when advance camera features can be accessed.
Any technology comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. As technology develops, disadvantages can greatly be outweighed. PWA can become the next bandwagon technology in just a few years, and end-user should not be surprised if it does not support older mobile device/web browser. As coined by Alex Russel’ Progressive Web Apps are just websites that took all the right vitamins.’
has over five years of experience in the web application, API, Mobile pen-testing, and mainly work on web application pen-testing. She is currently part of the IMSS- application security team at Happiest Minds Technologies Ltd. Shruti is an IT Security enthusiast and very passionate about learning new & emerging technologies.
