PWA or Progressive Web Apps is the next big thing Microsoft is rolling out for Windows 10. The plan is confirmed, and the release is set for Windows 10 Redstone 4 which will come in March / April of this year.
Those who aren’t aware, PWA can be simply understood as web wrapper, but this term doesn’t justify it as its more than a web wrapper. These apps will have access to native features of Windows 10 using the WinRT API including push notification, and if you are running Microsoft Edge browser, you will be able to use those PWA right in the browser with native experience including offline support.
That said, PWAs just like UWP will be available in store which means that developers will have to package it and release to stores. Microsoft will be using the Bing crawler to look for quality PWAs on the web, and automatically add them to the Microsoft Store.
Source: Microsoft
The PWAs will have to follow the same standards that UWP follows, especially if they want it o get into the store listing.
- Make sure that they use Service Workers.
- Quality Standards
- Secure connections
- Rich Manifest.
- The usual Microsoft standards.
Progressive Web Apps are just great web sites that can behave like native apps—or, perhaps, Progressive Web Apps are just great apps, powered by Web technologies and delivered with Web infrastructure.
Technologically speaking, PWAs are web apps, progressively enhanced with modern web technologies (Service Worker, Fetch networking, Cache API, Push notifications, Web App Manifest) to provide a more app-like experience.
The only reason Microsoft is doing this is to fill the gap which UWP is not able to fill. Not everyone wants it, and many would want to have code on their server side and deliver it wrapped. Even though it will miss many of the native features which can only be accessed by UWP, having an option could attract many more.