We have recently heard about Progressive Web Apps, the abbreviation for which is the symbol PWA. These applications are Internet applications that can be used on the home screen of all mobile phones. We will talk about Progressive Web Applications in detail on the website. EnglishShop.
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Progressive Web Apps
- Progressive Web Application Not a new JavaScript technology or framework.
- Rather, it is a set of good practices and features that should be available in a web application to be similar to the native mobile applications that we used to download from the Play Store for Android phones and the App Store for Apple phones and devices.
- The goal is to give web app users an experience similar to that of native apps.
- This type of application is supposed to work well in all devices, with all their technical features and capabilities.
- For example, some features and functions may not be available on some older phones or devices.
- But you must make sure that the application continues to work well, especially in terms of performance and speed.
When do we say that a web application is progressive?
As we said at the beginning, PWAs are just web applications made up of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, and of course they run in browsers.
But what sets it apart from others is a set of features and points that we collectively find only in a few web applications, and we will not be able to create a progressive web application unless we are fully aware of these points or principles.
Secure PWAs
PWAs work with a number of native browser interfaces, and these technologies only work on pages and sites served over the https protocol to protect users from man-in-the-middle attacks targeting their sensitive data. In general, using the HTTPS protocol has become something that is highly recommended by every website owner, and even the search engine Google decided some time ago to adopt it as one of the criteria for ranking search results.
Responsive progressive web applications
Your progressive web app should respond to all types and shapes of devices. The UI should be easy to work with and accessible to users regardless of the size of the screen they open the app on.
Applications work even when there is no internet connection
- In native mobile applications, we can open the application and see the main parts of the UI (top bar for example) even if the device is not connected to the Internet.
- No doubt you have tried before to access the Facebook or Twitter application offline.
- However, I noticed that the app is showing old content that is stored in cache.
- This experience is what progressive web applications seek to emulate, and their means of achieving this are what are known as service workers.
- In short, service workers are code or script that the browser runs in the background and is separate from the web page (it has no access to the DOM).
- This feature is used for progressive web application functionality that does not need direct interaction with users.
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Installable Progressive Web Applications
The main goal of creating progressive web applications is to enable users to open them from the home screen of the phone.
Just like they do with native apps. To reach this goal, you must add a Web Manifest file to the application.
It is a JSON file that contains a set of information related to the application such as the icon, name, and screen orientation.
Fast progressive web applications
- These apps are supposed to be very fast, especially while downloading.
- According to Google, about 53% of users close any website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- So speed and application agility should be a major goal and concern while building modern web applications.
- By only improving site loading speed, major companies and websites have been able to increase the number of sessions per visitor, which means reducing the bounce rate of visitors.
- Consequently, the conversion rate was raised at rates that in many cases reached 10% to 15%.
- This task is not easy, especially if the application is large.
- A number of technologies such as Webpack must be used to split the source code on demand or what is known as code splitting.
- Google's pattern called the PRPL pattern was formulated as a roadmap for building high-performance progressive web applications.
PWAs Each page has its own link
- Each page in a PWA should have its own link so that search engines can archive it just as they do with other web applications.
- Also, so that the user can share these pages on social media platforms.
- When creating a single-page application, you must ensure that the routing system initializes the state of the start page based on the URL given to it.
- As I mentioned earlier, this feature is made more accessible by modern JavaScript frameworks.