Over a year ago, Microsoft outlined the vision to bring Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to more than half a billion devices running Windows 10.
PWAs bridge the gap between the web apps we all love to build and a native app’s fluid elegance. PWAs feel more special even though it’s built on a full web stack in the browser. They also come with the features we love so much about the Web – such as constant updating, real hyperlinking, and no app store orphans. PWAs also have the “Best Offs” as part of their default functionality:
- Push Notifications
- Less storage space required
- ‘Feel’ like a native app
- Work offline too (or on low-quality networks)!
- No update-app distribution lag
- Always have a secure connection
- Can be easily shared via URL
- And finally a Nerd Alert: PWAs come with the W3C identifier as an “application”.
Google, Microsoft and other big players believe PWAs are key to the web’s future, and we are thrilled about it’s potential to enable more immersive web app experiences across all device form factors.
Beginning with EdgeHTML 17.17063
Microsoft has enabled Service Workers and push notifications by default in preview builds of Microsoft Edge—you can learn more about these features in “Service Worker: Going beyond the page.” This completes the suite of technologies (including Fetch networking and the Push and Cache APIs) that lay the technical foundation for PWAs on Windows 10.
See what more is available with PWA’s on Microsoft Edge and Windows 10
