Progressive Web Applications for Magento

What is a Progressive Web Application for Magento?

Progressive Web Applications are the future! Although existing technologies have long supported mobile interactions, progressive web apps will radically change how consumers use their mobile devices.

PWA’s provide a powerful, app-like browsing experience using good old web technology. From a user's point of view, PWA’s can behave like a web page and a native mobile app at the same time. To users, PWA’s feel like  a real mobile application regardless of the network state; they even work in offline mode.

The Origin of Progressive Web Apps

The developers working on the Google Chrome browser in 2015 coined the term PWA.

An evolution to front-end web technologies enabled merchants to deliver ‘app-like’ contextual experiences and change mobile shopping experiences.

Characteristics of Progressive Web Apps

Here are some of the main features of PWA’s, they are:

• Discoverable - Because a progressive web app is a website, you must be able to access it on search engines. This is a great advantage over native applications, which do not automatically become searchable via Google.

• Linkable - A well designed website should use the *Uniform Resource Interface(URI)

it indicates the state of the app. This should retain or reload state even if a user bookmarks or shares the application’s URL. - (URI *)

• Responsive - The progressive web applications ‘Universal Interface’(UI), are responsive to the view perspective of the device they run on and adjust for screen size.

• Installable - The progressive web applications are quick and easy to install

• App like - A progressive web app should also be like native app and should be built on an application shell model without refreshing much.
• Safe - It is imperative that PWA’s be delivered via HTTPS to prevent ‘middle-man attacks’.

What does PWA Studio do?

Over time Magento developed a set of tools that were targeted at providing developers with a standard interface to create PWA apps for Magento online stores. Over time this initiative produced the technology platform called PWA Studio.

You can learn more about PWA Studio in my next article.