Even though Progressive Web Applications (PWA) are mostly mentioned when talking about mobile applications, their benefits are by no means limited to only mobile users.
Browser vendors have been working on enabling PWA installation also on desktops. Google Chrome already supports installing Progressive Web Apps in it's latest versions. On Windows, you can also publish your PWA to the Microsoft Store to be displayed alongside native applications.
Advantages a PWA on desktop
- Automatic updates, no need to maintain and distribute several versions
- Quick access to application from launcher
- Fast installation from the browser
- Apps start quickly thanks to cached assets
- Apps support push notifications for alerting users of important events
Supported browsers and operating systems
Windows – Chrome 70 ChromeOS – Chrome 67 macOS and Linux – Chrome 72, can be tested already by enabling the chrome://flags#enable-desktop-pwas flag
Vaadin PWA support
Vaadin 12, due out in December, will allow you to turn your Vaadin app into a Progressive Web Application with a simple annotation:
@Route("")
@PWA(name = "My Progressive Web Application", shortName = "MyPWA")
public class MyPWA extends Div {
public MyPWA(){
setText("Welcome to my PWA");
}
}
You can already try out the functionality today by updating your Vaadin dependency to the latest Vaadin 12 pre-release.