Progressive Web Apps are the new hit

Gone are the days when you had to worry about storage whilst installing a new app. Progressive Web Apps are the future of mobile web, bringing parity to web and native apps. This, in turn, helps devs reach a greater audience beyond the app store.

  Sounds great, right?? But what exactly are these PWAs?

 "A Progressive Web App uses modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like user experience." – Progressive Web Apps

  As we know, mobile web shortcuts lack features of native apps like push notifications, working offline, adapt to any screen size, load on the home screen... and the list goes on. They were just a browser page skinned like an app. PWAs fix that with new Web APIs and new design to suit all your needs, all while consuming just a few KB!!!

  Progressive Web Apps are user experiences that have the reach of the web, and are:

• Reliable - Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions.
• Fast - Respond quickly to user interactions with silky smooth animations and no janky scrolling.
• Engaging - Feel like a natural app on the device, with an immersive user experience.

  This new feel definitely earns them a place on your home screen.

  Now, the magic behind PWAs comes in the form of Service Workers... Eh, who are they??
They are the incredibly powerful yet confusing technology that power services like offline functionality, background loading, push notifications and all that is needed to make PWAs look and feel like a native app.
  A service worker, written in JavaScript, is a client-side proxy and puts you in control of the cache and how to respond to resource requests. By pre-caching key resources, you can eliminate the dependence on the network, ensuring an instant and reliable experience for us users.

  Earlier, mobile web apps were not installed like an app on the home screen. Users could pin a website on their homepage, but the experience was second-rate and lacked the local features of the native app.
  Times change, and now Chrome for Android has added support for selective sites to be installed on the home screen like a PWA, with all the features its Play store counterpart could provide.
  Among the early adopters were Flipboard and Indian online market giant, Flipkart (being installed as Flipkart Lite). Wednesday's Google I/O saw India's biggest cab service, Ola, unveil their PWA which works like a breeze even under 2G connections. IMHO, Twitter Lite steals the show and can work as a complete replacement for its native app.

  In the end, Progressive Web Apps are all part of Web APIs, new design patterns, and marketing mayhem (we know Google depends on it the most). The mobile web coming closer to parity with native apps and making their way to the home screen, along with background working, faster loading and better notifications through the App Shell and Service Workers while being tiny as a few kilobytes, we definitely look to a better future where workflow is a breeze and web developers, too, can build amazing app experiences.

  Note: Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of PWAs, eliminating much of the manual testing that was earlier required. Take a look.