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PWA - Why should you use it and not use it?

Tharun Shiv on May 10, 2020

In the current world of technologies, one of the technologies that is currently booming is the PWA. It was introduced by Google in 2015 and since t...
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onderceylan profile image
Önder Ceylan 🌚

Hey Tharun, thanks for the post! I just want to add here that it’s possible to customize splash screens on iOS. You might want to check out pwa-asset-generator - npmjs.com/package/pwa-asset-generator.

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Tharun Shiv

That's great! Thanks for Sharing it Onder, will try using it someday. 🙂 Also feel free to share if any such generators are available for Android and web. Thanks

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onderceylan profile image
Önder Ceylan 🌚

Sure! This is library you can use while developing PWAs to generate icons and splash screens for all platforms.

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Tharun Shiv

Oh that would be very helpful. Thanks once again. 🙂

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Tharun Shiv

By the way, have you worked on any PWAs that are publicly accessible? If yes, please share the website link, we could check it out. 🙂

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pawelmiczka profile image
Paweł Miczka

I wrote many of PWAs just for testing and here's my thoughts:

  1. I kinda don't like update mechanism. By default after updating app on server you have to wait day or two to get new version. I heard that you can configure it to don't cache your app but then it doesn't make sense from what website is.
  2. It drains battery much quicker since it just runs Chrome or any other browser under the hood.
  3. Performance is sometimes just bad

.. and since there is something like Flutter or SwiftUI for iOS devices i still prefer this way. Meybe something will change later - hope so because I am more JavaScript developer than Dart or Swift :D

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embiem profile image
Martin Beierling-Mutz

There's a way around the update issue you mention. You can basically load the new version in the background and then refresh to use the new version. Here's another good article about it: medium.com/progressive-web-apps/pw...

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Tharun Shiv

Excellent article! Thanks for sharing.. 🙂

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Tharun Shiv

Great points Pawel, thanks for letting us know about your experience 🙂

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danyw3b profile image
DanyW3b

Very interesting considerations, Pawel! Thanks for sharing them.

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flyinliamryan profile image
flyinliamryan

No push notification on IOS.

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Tharun Shiv

Ah I see, that's another con then. Thanks for contributing 🙂

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chandrika56 profile image
Jaya chandrika reddy

Is there any way in which we can deploy PWA onto the Play Store?

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Tharun Shiv

Yes, there is. I will very soon be writing about TWA - Trusted Web Activities - which are not same as the usual Hybrid apps that we used to create, but is something above that. You can use your Progressive web app to create a TWA and you're good to go and can upload the APK to the play store.

I Will be writing about this soon, thank you 😊

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chandrika56 profile image
Jaya chandrika reddy

Okay thank you 🎉

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daviddalbusco profile image
David Dal Busco

PWABuilder ease the process. With its help, you can just provide your PWA URL and then get the package to upload and a README or what's to do.

I used it recently to bring DeckDeckGo to Google Play, was really handy and straightforward.

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Tharun Shiv

I've come across this, but haven't used it. Thanks for contributing David. 🙂

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assertnotnull profile image
Patrice Gauthier
  1. No download store presence

I find it weird that's one con for one of the reasons that PWA was created is to avoid the long flow of going to your favourite mobile OS store, clicking install, wait for it to download then be able to use it. People are annoyed by the growing consumption of disk usage relative to the benefit of using the app, the install flow and getting notifications to update an app. It also solves the problem of downloading a big amount of MBs on a bad network and could reduce your roaming charges (where if I'm not opening the app it's not updated). Also for users, installing an app could mean giving privilege access to the phone so they have to inspect the app privileges for anything odd (miners, unneeded GPS).

This impact of app install was significant.
In 2015 for Google, 69% users abandoned the page when they saw an interstitial to download the app:
twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/62...

Still in 2019:
forbes.com/sites/victoriacollins/2...

So I would add in Pros: higher user retention of the app/website.

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Tharun Shiv

That's a good perspective 🙂 thanks for contributing

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q2apro

I have tried to bring my forum to the PWA world. However, I realized that all the content got cached and new activities on questions were not reflected. Even so the server was available all time. So from my POV, the main disadvantage is the cache handling. And at that time (last year) I could not find helpful information about how to fix this.

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Tharun Shiv

Ah.. that's a great experience and a point to think about.. so it isn't feasible unless we know the appropriate functions to use. Good point 🙂🔥

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Senik Hakobyan • Edited

Having SSL and secure connection is not a disadvantage. :)
I would even say that it is a big advantage for user that no one can implement insecure push notifications that may include a sensitive information.

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allison profile image
Allison Walker

Yes, this is true. And, actually Google started prioritizing https URLs over http a few years ago, so even non-PWA sites are better off switching.

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Tharun Shiv

That's a good perspective. And also, given the easy ways in which we can convert our hosted site from http to https, yeah what you tell makes sense.
Thank you for contributing 🙂

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Bayu Angora

I like your sticky notes apps.

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Tharun Shiv

Thank you 😊

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venkat121998 profile image
venkat anirudh

Great article! Where should I start learning PWA?

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Tharun Shiv

Check out theNetNinja playlist on YouTube 🙂

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fisherozzo profile image
Mimmo

+1, thats a great channel. Thanks for your tips Tharun

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Tharun Shiv • Edited

Thanks a lot Daniacco 🙂 Yes , he is one of my favourites🙂

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yanivsuzana profile image
yanivsuzana • Edited

Hi good article on "Not easy for a beginner to get started"
I know of a good site that makes it easy for developers
And generates code for any type of website
Also Good for a third-party site like wix website
wappaa.com

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amilamen profile image
Ezéchiel Amen AGBLA

Have you tried IONIC + Capacitor for build PWA ?

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Tharun Shiv

No... Will check it out 🙂

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necrogami profile image
Anton C. Swartz IV

One complaint, can you at the start name what PWA means for those that don't know. No where in the article do you break down what PWA stands for

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Tharun Shiv

Thanks for the suggestion, will add it right away. 🙂

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kayavail profile image
Olukayode OJO

Check this out available.ng

It uses PWA. Not sure about service worker

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Juan Sifontez

Thanks for this post Tharun, is amazing

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Tharun Shiv

Thank you.. glad you liked it 🙂

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Aarush Bhat

You can now post pwa on play store directly!

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Tharun Shiv

Oh is it, how is that?

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praveenreddy1798 profile image
praveenreddy1798

Great post, didn't know this much about PWA, now interested to Learn it.

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Tharun Shiv

Glad it helped