Have you ever heard of a Progressive Web Application (PWA)?
There's no need to panic, most people haven't heard of it. The best way to explain a progressive web application involves explaining the current status quo. Typically when software engineers build a website, they have to build an application for IOS separately, then for Android, then desktop (the order doesn't really matter however the website is usually first). By now you see that there's a lot of platform-specific applications to be built (by different software engineers using different programming languages) before a software solution can work everywhere.
PROGRESSIVE WEBSITES HELPS CREATE MULTIPLATFORM APPLICATIONS OF A WEBSITE
What PWAs (Progressive Web Applications) simply says to software engineers is "forget about all the other platforms, just build the web application and I'll make it look like you built the mobile and desktop applications by allowing the user to install the web application on their devices like they would a software). Recall that a web application is a fully interactive website, what this means that as long as you have a browser (that isn't firefox) and you use that browser to access the PWA, you have the option to install that website on your device and have it look like an app so you don't have to open the browser and type the link to the website every time.
PROGRESSIVE WEB APPLICATIONS WORK LIKE MAGIC
The browser is still important because every time you click the app on your device and it shows you the website (while making it look like an app), the browser you used to install it is the one running the magic tricks in the background because in truth PWAs aren't really apps, they're just an extension of the browser by allowing you have your cake and eat it. You get to have an app without directly opening your browser (though the browser handles all your interaction on the app). PWAs are great for both developers and clients because it helps you quickly deploy a make-believe application especially when time of the essence as mobile and desktop application development takes a lot of time and funds to build. PWAs can be built with just HTML, CSS, and Javascript, you can also use frameworks to build them. New frameworks like Blazor are able to create PWAs. Popular examples of progressive web applications are; Youtube, Youtube music, Twitter, Pinterest, The Washington Post, etc. I'm attaching a picture below this post to help you identify PWAs, they have an "install" icon on the extreme right of the address bar of a browser.
