Are Progressive web applications becoming the next big thing?

Developers and people in the mobile app and technology industry are have a constant debate going on for years that which one is better

“Mobile web experience or Mobile application”.

So, let me give you my opinion. Mobile applications are better than mobile web experience.

But now, that I have said that, we have a new trend going on in the apps world, which revolves around a technology which works in a same way in both mobile web browsing and applications.

It is progressive web app or PWA to be called in short.

Having the advantages of progressive web app, it will improve users experience, and this is the reason why this technology is the next big thing in the industry.

Since it is a new technology, everyone have a lot of doubts and questions. Some people have heard about progressive web apps, but they’re not so sure how it works, what’s the benefits and why it is better then native apps.

So, here we are telling you everything you need to know to understand progressive web apps and giving you an overview after that you can decide yourself that “is it actually the future of mobile app technology or not”.

What is progressive web applications(PWA) means?

Progressive web applications are web apps which works through emerging the traditional progressive strategy with web browser APIs and features to give a experience of native app to the users by cross-platform web applications.

In simple language we can say that, progressive web application takes advantage of the latest technologies to combine the best of web and mobile apps. Think of it as a website built using web technologies but which acts and feels like an app. Actually now you can turn almost all the website into progressive web app, thankfully because of some smart addition done by the developers.

Why is progressive web applications are becoming so popular?

Most of the sites you find online is actually progressive web applications. Let’s take Instagram as an example, you can open the site of Instagram on your browser of any smart phone, it gives you an option to install it on your phone and when you do that, you will see that its performance is just like any other native app. There is no browser being used anymore, and it works pretty much same in both iOS and Android smart phones. You can easily login to your account and that’s it, you are good to go. That’s the best advantage of building your web app keeping progressive web application in mind.

Progressive web apps gives you an alternative by improvising and apps cross platform performance by combining web and mobile applications. Progressive web app users even have a benefit that this application gives them an option to save any app built with PWAs on the home screen of their smartphone without any compulsory downloading and that saves so much storage space in user's device.

Continuous development of web technologies an increasing abilities of progressive web apps, they are replacing the apps with mobile web. Progressive web apps can easily replace the native app because PWA can do almost all the things that native apps can, with more efficiency, it has a better functioning in Android phones and it is developing itself frequently. So for Android phones PWA is a much better option than native apps.

Progressive web apps also attract a lot of organic traffic on the browser and it gives an amazing user experience on the mobile phone, and it works almost in the same way on iOS and Android so now because of this the developers have to do less work and they can put their remaining time and focus on other technologies. PWAs use the same coding language for both the iOS and androids, so now the developers don’t need to make two different versions of coding language for iOS and Android, because of this they can concentrate more effectively on one thing and make it more versatile.

This way it also becomes cost effective, when you are only working on one coding language and make a same version for both iOS and Android instead of two different version, it cost you less. So this become one more advantage of building progressive web app instead of native app.

It was Google who gave a definition to progressive web application, promoted it and put PWA pages in the top result of the Google search, to increase its popularity.

Amazon came forward after that and implemented progressive web application in their store, and then many more followed them one by one and PWA is started to take up the market slowly but steadily. PWA work like magic for the businesses and industries which are focusing on both web and mobile platform and want their app to work on both of them effortlessly and hassle free.

There are so many features of Progressive web applications that you will literally can’t count them on fingers, some of them are:-

· Offline functioning

· Push notifications

· Mobile specific navigation

· No download required

· Home screen access

· Low data requirement

· No update required

And I can literally go on counting and still be left with some of the features, and if we compare native apps with PWA most of these features are not available in native apps and that’s what make PWA more user friendly and beneficial. PWA needs to be as progressive, and easy to use as possible and work on as many platforms as users need. It is designed in a way that it can fulfill any requirement of the users device either it is mobile phone, desktop, tablet or laptop, they will work in the same way on any of these device despite of the difference in their size and functionality.

Users have this constant worry about Updating their apps while they use native app but with progressive web apps even this worry goes away. It updates itself automatically and you don't need to release a new version each and every time you have to update something on your phone.

No matter what happens in the future of mobile app technology, progressive web apps will always going to have extra benefit. It will quickly and easily adapt the change that happens in the future and will update itself in a way that it will still be the best choice for the users and will always be able to fit in the dramatically changing world of technologies.

Progressive web application is definitely considered at the future of cross platform development, because of its amazing speed, smooth functioning, users friendliness, easy application on every device and requirement of literally no updates or installations.

The way it functions both on iOS an Android without any glitch makes it the perfect app for the future.

So now with that said, you have almost all the information related to progressive web application and now I think you will be able to decide yourself that do you want to continue with the old native apps or do you want to update to the upcoming future friendly progressive web applications.