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The Best Tools You Will Ever Need For Progressive Web App Development

At the current stage we are in, the world of website development has seen a steady rise in ‘progressive’ websites. They have become highly popular today as a way to build apps with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML that have a level of performance and usability which is as good as native apps.

To understand PWAs, we need to understand that there are critical capabilities which separate a progressive website from a traditional website. These progressive web apps have the following capabilities:


  • They work with most browsers and devices be it a mobile or desktop with a progressive codebase
  • They fit abt all screen and form factors with the help of af a responsive design
  • They leverage service workers that enable offline connectivity
  • Provide app-like experience leveraging re-engagement tools, including push notifications
  • Leverage a web app manifest in order to describe the resources


Let’s look at some of the most useful tools you will ever need in order to build a Progressive Web App.

Knockout

A free, open source tool which helps developers with Model-View-View-Model or MVVM bindings. In this way, you can make the process of coding JavaScript UIs easy by defining views and declarative bindings which are controlled by ViewModel properties.

Knockout runs entirely on JavaScript, which works with all major browsers and any web framework. You can also integrate the Knockout library easily with existing websites without extensive rewrites.

AngularJS

JavaScript is usually the introductory language learned by students who wish to learn web development. If you’re an experienced Java or .NET developer, then AngularJS is one of the best JavaScript frameworks you can use for web applications. Even so, their website offers a ton of guides, tutorials, and resources that will help you learn your way around the platform.


PWABuilder

Currently, the fastest way to create a PWA is to use PWABuilder and rapidly construct a service worker for offline functionality, that works by pulling and serving the “offline.html” from your web server as and when users lose internet connectivity. One can also submit your PWA to the app store for Android and iOS devices.

Webpack

If you want to bundle up your JavaScript app resources, including non-code assets like fonts and images, Webpack comes in extremely handy for such instances. You can treat them as JavaScript objects, that in turn allow them to load faster. The platform also makes it significantly easier to manage dependencies.

Polymer

Use Polymer as your default template to significantly reduce the overall time required to setup a progressive web app. It is an open source project by Google which gets frequent updates to be in sync with the open source projects the template leverages.

Conclusion

Progressive Web Apps are the definite future of mobile web experiences. However, still not many brands use them to their benefit. These tools come to aid when you need to start with progressive web app development and establish an authoritative presence online. You should be aware that these tools, resources, and practices evolve with the constantly evolving technologies of major online browsers people have accustomed themselves with.

Jane Brewer

I am Web Analyst I love to analyse the web for the betterment of businesses and providing information to my blog reader. I love to write about trending technologies, specially mobile technologies.

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