The collaborative Vaadin, Polymer, and Skate web platform study is almost over and we have some great initial results! After opening one month ago we’ve received over 700 responses from every kind of developer. Architects, managers, hobbyists, students, all answered our fifteen minute survey about Web Components and Progressive Web Apps.
We’re going to run the survey for one more week from the release of this blog post, so fill out the survey and share the link: https://bit.ly/web-survey-2016 .
Interesting Findings
We are planning on doing a more in depth analysis of the data, but here are three big takeaways from our survey.
Lots of people already build with Web Components
74% of respondents have used web components and at least 46% have launched a production app with web components. It’s remarkable that so many people are already building with web components. Developers cite ease of use, quicker development, and less code complexity as why they chose to build with web components.
When answering why they haven’t decided to build with web components, respondents expressed hesitation with immature standards and implementation, and many were concerned with lack of browser support. Many respondents were unhappy with web component polyfills and are waiting for better performance.
But there’s light on the horizon! All major browsers are planned to support most features of web components as early as next year.
Tables of Web Component support from caniuse.com
Progressive Web Apps are coming
33% of respondents have built a Progressive Web App and a full 55% are planning on building their next mobile app as a PWA. It seems that developers are committed to creating high quality web apps that work as well on mobile as they do on desktop.
On the flip side, when asked why they might build a native mobile app instead of a PWA, respondents were most concerned with performance and access to hardware such as bluetooth and accelerometer.
We believe, however, that the web platform will grow to encompass advanced use cases that currently can only be done with a native app.
Bring on the web components!
We asked respondents who use web components which element collections they use. Polymer Elements was used by 85% of respondents and our own Vaadin Elements were used by 23%.
However, 53% of respondents used in-house developed element collections, meaning that they couldn’t find the elements they needed in public collections. Now that web component specifications and libraries have matured, it’s up to developers and companies to create powerful collections of web components.
We’re excited to display all the results of this collaborative survey, so we’re going to run the survey for one more week. Keep following this blog to see our full results soon.