A quick guide to developing PWA apps for your business

  • Sundew
    Sundew
  • sundew
    10 min.read
  • sundew
    January 8th, 2019
  • Technology
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Perhaps you're wondering what is Progressive Web App (PWA)?

There is a lot of buzz around PWA app with assertions that it is the future of web app development. Since its inception in 2015, it has taken the industry by storm because of the relative ease of development and excellent user experience which is equivalent to the native apps.

Progressive web applications are reliable, fast and engaging. It takes advantage of the most recent technologies to combine the best of web and mobile applications.  With such a combination, it is possible to create ultra-fast web pages that provide improved user experience, better visitor engagement, and increased conversion rates. You can also explore how mobile applications as an integral part of today’s business model are shaping modern business strategies..

PWAs can be saved on desktops just like any native Android or iOS App.  These are specialized, Java-based websites that give mobile users an app-like experience. It loads fast and responds quickly all while using web technologies. PWAs bring significant benefits to businesses like higher conversion rates and customer retention.

So, let’s get into the core principles for better understanding: 

Connectivity or offline support

Poor internet connectivity won’t be the hindrance for launching PWA apps. They solve the slow connection issues and work on all possible scenarios. Regardless of bandwidth and latency, the navigation inside the app is fairly smooth.

Performance

High bounce rates are something that scares all business owners. The root cause of high bounce rates is slow page loading time.  As reported by Google, if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 53% of users abandon it and if the time exceeds to 5 seconds, the probability of the bounce increases by 90%.  So, this is where PWAs comes in making it readily available on the user’s device and browser.

Rail model

RAIL is mainly an abbreviation for describing key performance metrics. By analyzing human interactions with computer programs a user-centric model RAIL was created. This model can be applied to all user-oriented software programs like websites, desktop applications, mobile applications, and video games.

Engagement

The essence of Progressive web applications is that it should have the feel and the capabilities of native apps and needs to be built on the application shell model, with minimal page refreshes. On the desktop, PWAs can be added to docks and taskbar. Also, shortcuts can be added to the desktop.

Secure

In a progressive web app, all network requests are intercepted through service workers so, it is imperative that the app is hosted over HTTPS to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

Merits of Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

Progressive Web App (PWA) offers a package deal of some lucrative features:

•    The size range of PWAs is way too light and can range in KBs which is much lesser than native apps.

•    Cost of acquisition is very low as it is easy to convince a user to visit a website than to install an app to get a first time experience.

•    Fewer efforts are required to build and release updates

PWA apps can build a strong mobile presence and drive your business in areas of poor internet connection. In the coming years, we are going to witness a massive rise in progressive app development. Mainly the areas like e-commerce, media, and restaurants can reap more profits and attract new customers with the implementation of PWA

Thoughts and Trends
Across Our Focus Areas

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The property uses a setter under the hood.React made the notion of immutable state more widespread in the JavaScript ecosystem. If the state is not updated by mutating (e.g., using state.myproperty), instead the component’s setState method is called with the data to updateData passingData passing patterns are simplified with component-based applications where communication is done from parent state to child state vice versa.Angular input and output are defined by the component and are bound in the template where output seems emitted by the child and listened to by parents.Whereas React props pass data as well function which helps them to update the parent state from the child.In Vue, props are transmitted from parent to child and functions can be transmitted back to parents as well.Types and Data validationValidating the type of data within the application helps in development as well as debugging. 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There are multiple answers: handle styles separately, use webpack to extract your import ‘my.css' statements into a stylesheet or use CSS-in-JS libraries.Vue is called a “progressive framework’ depending on the size of the application being developed. Vue also offers a package and CLI that integrates with tools like webpack. The preferred way through which the component is written is to write a single file component with a script and style tag. Vue loader compiles the template into javascript along with the script section and extracts the contents of the style tag into the stylesheet that is built over time. For small projects, Vue has nicer ergonomics while for large scale projects Angular has a structural edge. React comes in between these two.Testing and Server side renderingTesting in angular is done with typescript components and classes. To test the complete logic it would require a full-scale DOM environment to test. In React and Vue template logic test is possible to use enzyme and Vue test utils, due to its use of Virtual DOM and rendering function. This ability to render without a full DOM environment is also useful for server-side rendering of the javascript framework. Vue has a Vue server renderer package and React has React DOM serverDetailed Performance ComparisonWe compared overall performance by taking care of different aspectsSize of the applicationSpeed of DevelopmentSpeed of functioning and real-world performanceScalabilityDesign flexibilityLearning curveCommunity scopeSize of application as well as frameworkSize of framework matters while developing a real-world application. Because the size of the framework also impacts in creating a low-sized application and helps in faster loading speed and lower rendering time. In the case of the Size of the framework is directly proportional to the performance of it. Angular and VUE have installation packages of 143KB and 151KB respectively while the installation package of Vue is 100KB which is the lightest among all. If you want to go for a lightweight application it’s advised to go for a smaller framework.This does not mean that ideally, it will not accommodate larger applications, VUE has a track record of building a framework for large web applications like Alibaba, Gitlab, etcReal-world performance When it comes to rendering performances, VUE Js is the fastest among all. Due to its small size, it outperforms all the existing ones like React and Angular. An experiment by “Stefenkrause” shows the rendering comparison between all 3 frameworks. With a demo set of the application with 1 to 100 rows of data, VUE renders at 488.7 Milliseconds while Angular has taken around 543 milliseconds to perform it. From Benchmarking report of “StefenKrause” Vue is outperforming all existing frameworks in terms of speed and performance.Learning curve and Speed of developmentCompared with Angular and React, Vue has an easy learning curve and development is faster. Many companies are switching to Vue because it's easier to learn and faster to code than others. Developing Angular and React requires good javascript knowledge and you need to make a lot of decisions regarding third-party libraries. In the case of large-scale applications, it might be an issue for VUE to built it to build, test, debugging because of the building of it in an old-fashioned javascript way.Angular shows error messages clearly to solve and resolve them faster. In the case of React development, it is somehow faster than Angular because of its low code development.Design flexibilityOut of all these 3 frameworks, Vue Js is the most flexible to design. The library should not dictate how it should be used in the case of Vue. Unlike Angular, VueJS does not force you to use modules or define a controller: instead, one just creates a VueJS object that is configured with the data and methods needed in the templateUsing an opinionated framework can be both advantageous and disadvantageous: it may save developers time by already having something that made design choices for them, or it can become a hurdle as the framework “locks” developers into doing things a specific way.Community scopeSince Angular is supported by Google and React is Supported by Facebook, the growth of these platforms in both of these frameworks, updates are done frequently and maintained well. Upgrades and Migration are not an issue for these frameworks. There is an announcement every 6 months for a Major Update.In the case of Vue. js community is smaller compared to the above 2 as this is quite new in the segment while migration is not a problem in the case of vue.js. React is more flexible than Angular, because Angular is a full framework, and React is an independent full-scale library with well-maintained modules. Here are the community and contributor statistics for all 3 channels. Since Angular is supported by Google and React is supported by Facebook, there is no doubt regarding it.Complete performance analysis tableSummaryAfter analyzing all of the things above there are some clear things listed and it is sufficient enough to decide which would be best for your company. Still there are some suggestions you could imply for quick decision making in simple termsChoose AngularFor complex projectsYou need reliability and scalabilityWhen you have a skilled Angular developer and have time to adapt to changes and learn the typescriptChoose ReactNot too complex front endThe project had a lot of reusable contentPerformance and scalability are critical with tight deadlinesChoose VueThe scope of the project is on the smaller sideNeed High performanceUnskilled frontend developer with Javascript frameworkNot much time to learn new things

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