Momentous. The first wave of Progressive Web Apps is here. This is the latest Microsoft bid to close the app gap on the Windows 10 platform, one that it hopes developers will see through.
The PWAs offer a number of advantages over the traditional UWP, Universal Windows Platform apps.
It was a couple of months back that the software titan unveiled its strategy for these new type of applications — web apps that made use of modern technologies like push notifications, Fetch networking, Service Worker, Cache API and Web App Manifest.
Technical terms, but basically the idea was to bring these PWAs to Windows 10 with the next feature update, which itself is due next week.
To mark the occasion, the software titan has published a number of these apps:
As you can see from the screenshot above, these have been published under the Microsoft Store banner. Suggesting that the company might be manually vetting the candidates to best highlight the power of these Progressive Web Apps.
Apps like Airfarewatchdog, ASOS, Build.com, DayTrip, Men’s Wearhouse, myCARFAX, OfferFinder.net, oyester, Skyscanner, Space, Student Doctor Network, The Penny Hoarder, Travelzoo, and ZipRecruiter are up for grabs.
Along with the new Twitter app, of course, which surfaced a few days back, after having made the transition to a PWA.
Worth a mention that since PWAs are hosted on the developer’s servers, they can push updates for these applications without ever submitting an update to the Microsoft Store. They are also cross-platform, meaning these apps will work on pretty much all Windows 10 powered devices.
Hopefully these provide the uptick that Windows 10 users are looking for and go a way towards bridging the gap between Microsoft’s platform and the likes of iOS and Android.
No idea just how much of an impact they will have on things, but this is a good start.
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