About progressivewebapps.com¶

progressivewebapps.com is an independent technical reference on Progressive Web Apps. It covers the whole platform: the web app manifest, service workers, caching and offline, push and background APIs, device and OS integration, installation and distribution, platform support, and the engineering around them: performance, architecture, tooling, testing, security and UX.

Key takeaways

The guide is written for professional developers and goes down to spec-level behavior.
Every page cites specifications and primary sources such as MDN, browser vendor documentation and RFCs.
Browser support information is dated, because it changes quickly. Always check the linked live sources before relying on it.
The site is independent. It is not affiliated with any browser vendor, and it runs no advertising.
The site is itself an installable, offline-capable PWA.

What this guide covers¶

The guide is organized the way you build a PWA:

Fundamentals: what a PWA is, how the concept evolved, how it compares with native apps, and what makes a site installable.
Core technologies: the manifest, service workers and caching & storage.
Capabilities: push, sync and background work, plus device and OS integration.
Install & distribute: installation flows, app stores and platform support.
Engineering: performance, architecture, tooling, testing, security and UX.
Guides and reference material: checklists, cheat sheets, a glossary and an FAQ.

Editorial principles¶

Primary sources first. Claims about API behavior are checked against the relevant specification (W3C, WHATWG, IETF RFCs), MDN and browser vendor documentation. Each page ends with a Further reading section that lists the sources it relies on.

Dated support information. Support for PWA features changes with almost every browser release. Support tables state the date they were verified and link to live compatibility data on MDN and Can I use. When a feature ships only in Chromium-based browsers, or only behind a flag or an origin trial, the page says so.

Working code. Code samples are complete and written to production standards, including error handling. Where there are several ways to do something (plain JavaScript or Workbox, Node.js or Python), the alternatives appear side by side in tabs.

No hype. Performance and business figures appear only with a link to their public source, and are attributed to whoever published them.

Keeping pages current¶

The web platform moves quickly. Every page was fact-checked against specifications, MDN compatibility data and browser vendor sources, and each support table states when it was verified. Pages are revised as browsers ship changes. If a page and its linked specification or vendor documentation disagree, trust the linked source.

This site is a PWA¶

You can install this guide and read the pages you've recently visited while offline. The site uses a service worker with network-first caching for pages, cache-first caching for fingerprinted assets, and an offline fallback page. Read how it's built →

Analytics and cookies¶

Allow analytics stores an optional first-party cookie in this browser. Reject does not. The rest of the site works either way. Analytics choices in the footer opens the choice again.

No name, email address or account is collected. There is no advertising, no session recording, and no record of which buttons you click. Analytics stays on this site. It is not sent to an advertising network or a separate analytics host.

The cookie is stored only after Allow. That is the basis for it: UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a) and PECR, and, for readers in the EU, the ePrivacy rules together with GDPR Article 6(1)(a). Turning analytics off deletes the cookie. The choice itself is stored in local storage under the name pwa-analytics-consent, so the question is not asked on every page. That record is only there to remember the answer.

A browser that sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control does not get the question, and no analytics cookie is stored.

This site is published by ProgressiveWebApps.com and built by Mojibake. Questions about this measurement can go there.