Trailer for the talk
Here's a sneak peek of the talk: Maxim goes over the advantages of Progressive Web Apps technology and how to start building one.
About the talk
This intro-level session will cover the basics of Progressive Web Applications (PWA). You’ll learn about why PWAs are great for building app-like, cross-platform projects, the advantages they bring to developers, users, and businesses, and how to start building your PWAs.
This talk will cover
- The definition of PWAs
- Advantages PWAs have over alternatives like React Native
- Building a PWA with service worker API and Workbox
This event will be held on Zoom. Register to receive the recording afterward.
About the speaker
Maxim Salnikov has been building web applications for 20+ years. He is currently a Developer Engagement Lead at Microsoft. As a passionate community builder, he frequently speaks at events around the world and runs his own conferences & meetups.
Highlights of the talk
Is PWA (progressive web apps) gaining popularity?
The latest edition of Web Almanac shows that over 3.22% of mobile sites use service workers. You can approximate that these are progressive web applications because service workers are the heart engine and brain of PWA. These service workers serve 19.26% of page views on a page, which means most large and popular websites are going into this technology.
To define useful applications, they need to fit the following criteria:
- Useful: feature-rich, leveraging all power of the platform
- Available: easy to find and return to
- Pleasant: performant, smooth user experience
What are some options to build applications?
A few years ago, the most obvious solution was to go and build native apps. However, there are some downsides to building native apps. For instance, you would need at least two development teams to build and support iOS and Android apps. Next, if you talk specifically about mobile platforms, you have to deploy to the app store. This is a border between you and your users. Another problem is that some stores are sensitive to applications built with templates and constructors. Lastly, very few players share the vast majority of income in this market.
Instead of native apps, you can also build cross-platform frameworks. However, there will always be compromises. It also begs the question, is it really future proof? Some frameworks may longer be relevant in the market. Most of these frameworks promise that they can run everywhere, but is it really a “write once and run everywhere?” situation? It’s not 100% true.
The last option is a true, clear, pure web app. True web apps are available almost everywhere, the engines are constantly improving their performances, there’s access to devices hardware, APIs for authentication & payments, and streamlined and future-proof learning curve.
Some other advantages of web as an application platform are:
- Evergreen browsers
- Versatile language(s)
- Excellent tooling
- Huge communities
Some disadvantages include:
- Historically depends on the “connection status”
- Historically limited to work in the browser, not a platform context.
What is PWA and its advantages?
Progressive web apps are web apps that use emerging, and modern, web browser APIs and features along with traditional progressive enhancement strategy to bring a native app-like user experience to cross-platform web applications. Remember this is not a framework or a library, not a formalized standard, but a useful design pattern. The best part is that PWA works everywhere natively. Even when they don’t work everywhere, you can use progressive enhancement strategy driven by feature detection.
Here are some examples of native-like experiences:
- Smarter and smoother networking + full support of offline experience
- Chances to reach out to users through notifications
- Lots of code can be run in the background without the application open
- Proper application experience
To find out more about PWA and its capabilities, visit https://whatpwacando.today.