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.

Progressive Web App in action on Android

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.