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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I don't understand is how Progressive Web Apps are different from Web Apps that I could add to the home screen on iOS for a long time already.

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They work offline, and can do background tasks such as showing notifications even while the app is not open (enabled by Service Workers).

They are not _different_ from what iOS offers, they just take things to the next level.

I guess the main difference is that they work offline. Also, Chrome will ask user to add it to home screen.

iOS web apps worked in a similar way with a manifest file that was specifying all the files that were to be downloaded when the page was added to the home screen and how long they were meant to be cached. I remember having created one 5 years ago and the technology was probably around for longer.

Maybe I miss something but the term Progressive Web App feels a bit like "Ajax", i.e. a marketing term for a technology that pre-existed as a way to promote it.

Service Workers (which are one of the core technologies behind the Progressive Web Apps label) go further than manifest files because they can deal with any kind of HTTP request (including e.g. calls to your REST API). Also, because they are code rather than static lists backed by hard-wired browser logic, you can implemnt any kind of caching strategy you want.

That being said, Progressive Web Apps is pretty much just an umbrella term useful for marketing several new and upcoming browser APIs (Service Workers being one of them) and not really a thing in itself.

Damn, is that all they are? I kept seeing PWA PWA PWA, and the language to describe them are "tech news" quality descriptions like 'Website uses.. ALGORITHMS to make the site work!'

I figured it wasn't talking about IPFS serverless apps, or paired with Ethereum. I didn't see the usual "Bitcoin/Ethereum/Blockchain" bait on these articles, so it couldn't have been that.

It's good to know it's just a catch-all for the new APIs for caching and service workers.

You have a point; my impression is that, just like Ajax, more than a new technology/s, it defines a web development model, a certain class of webs sites that result from combining certain technologies in a certain way that makes them have certain characteristics that make them distinctive.

There was the Application Cache (which used a manifest), but it was removed and replaced by service workers.

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