Google will soon integrate Progressive Web Apps deeper into Android

Tocsin_786 · February 6, 2017

On 2/2/2017 at 5:32 PM, Misanthrope said:

What the hell is a progressive app.

*reads*

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*stops reading*

Far too many stupid fucking buzz words for me, anyone can translate?

I can't understand it either, but looking at the pretty illustrations on Googles dev page, I believe its like the things on the Google Now Launcher. If you search for weather on Google Now, it brings up the interface in "web" form (so its off their website, not like an app). If you click on the interface, it lets you interact with the weather of the week, temperature, and wind like as if you are using a weather app. I guess that is what google is trying to do better, but with more websites.

Sniperfox47 · February 6, 2017

On 03/02/2017 at 2:30 AM, LAwLz said:

"Progressive Web apps" is just a fancy word for websites which hooks into Google similarly to how a native program would do. For example, Soundcloud hooks into volume controls. So instead of having to open up your browser, navigate to the soundcloud tab and then lower the volume, the soundcloud website is able to display volume controls in the notification field.

Another example would be to allow a website like LinusTechTips to send push notifications without needing to install an app.

I think paperplanes.world demonstrates it pretty well. You need to open it on your phone though. It will look and feel like a native app, despite being a website.

Just to be clear, you don't need Google's web services for push notifications. There's a web standard for push that works across Opera, Chrome, Firefox, and potentially a couple other browsers I can't remember.

But other than this it's basically what LAwLz said. Google's just trying to push less integrated native apps for web related apps. Like the Facebook app and tumblr app and bestbuy app don't make too much sense tbh. Instead build a caching webapp using service workers than can have some limited offline functionality, and use that in place of an app.

Basically Google wants to support the same kind of webapps that FirefoxOS was designed around, natively on their platform just like FirefoxOS.