Progressive Web Apps in Ionic
I have been aware of Progressive Web Apps (PWA) for quite some time now beacause I am closely following the development of the Ionic Framework and they have been very actively supporting this idea.
Benefits of the PWA include
- Faster loading and better performance on low bandwidth networks or even offline,
- Adding shortcuts to home screen for quicker access,
- And ability to receive push notification when the application is not running.
This is mainly achieved with a service worker — a background JavaScript thread that handles caching and background notifications. Some additional configuration is also required in a form of manifest.json file. For chrome on Android to automatically offer ADD TO HOME SCREEN to user, the application must also be served via a secure HTTPS connection.
I agree that progressive web apps have the potential of stealing the thunder from mobile apps altogether for the following reasons:
- Easier development and maintenance with cross-platform support
- Easier to distribute and update (web URL, no app/play store, no installation)
- Accessible in browsers across all devices
Of course mobile applications currently have the advantage of accessing operation system native functionalities, but I imagine this could be solved with plugins, similar to Cordova.