The post placed a lot of emphasis on how Microsoft views PWAs as a first-class application solution for Windows. To prove this they discussed how Progressive Web Apps can be submitted to the Windows store to become a full native application.
The post highlighted many points, which I'll try to highlight here:
- All In on Progressive Web Apps
- Service Workers Shipped On By Default in Windows Insider Build 17063
- Bing will be used to crawl and identify PWAs and automatically submit them to the Windows store
- automatic a submission does not mean acceptance. There are certain criteria the team is working on to identify true apps for the store.
- Official indexing will start in the coming months
- the next major release of Windows will feature PWAs in the store and be available to general users.
- They have already identified 1.5 million potential progressive web apps to be included in the Windows store
- to help developers and businesses create progressive web apps the team has created a tool called PWA builder
- PWA builder is a wizard that will generate boilerplate code and handle submission to the Windows store
- progressive web apps installed via the Windows store are full-blown native applications that can access platform specific APIs
The article also attempts to answer the question of should you create a UWP or PWA application. I have some opinionated thoughts on this position, which you can read in my
longer post on my blog.
I also have many questions because I feel like there are still some gaps in the Microsoft progressive web application strategy. These include an Add to Homescreen or Start Menu without the Windows Store option? How can enterprises leverage PWAs in the store? Will PWAs using trditional payment processors still be subject store transaction fees?
Microsoft is raising the bar for Progressive Web Apps with their Windows plans. They are the first ones to include PWAs in their platform application store.
This in essence leapfrogs the Google strategy of prompting users to install a Progressive Web App on their Homescreen. Of course desktops don't have homescreens like mobile phones, but they do have desktops and start menus.
For the record, when you add a PWA to the homescreen on Android Oreo or better it is automatically converted to a WebAPK. This is also a native app on Android, but without the ability to access platform specific APIs like a PWA on Windows.
The Microsoft news only emphasizes the importance of being a good Progressive Web Application developer. This means you need to know how to deliver great user experiences using the best web technologies. Developers must master service workers, service worker caching and web performance optimization just to name a few skills.
That is why I created the course
Progressive Web Apps From Beginner to Expert. This course is over 20 hours of video training and more to come. I cover more than anybody else on progressive web applications and speak from several years of experience.
With Microsoft Google and even Apple pushing progressive web applications businesses are going to be demanding skilled developers to create their applications. You don't want to miss out on this opportunity to be one of the leaders in this emerging field.