Chapter 9. Making Our App Installable with a Manifest
We’re now starting down the road to Progressive Web App land. From now on, our only focus will be on taking our existing application and making it faster, sleeker, and more user-friendly.
One of the big advantages of the Progressive Web App is bridging the gap between a web application (viewed in a browser) and a native app (launched as a separate application). The next few chapters, in particular, will focus on making our web app more native-like, without losing all the advantages of a web application.
The first major benefit of a web application over a native app is the lack of an install barrier. If you create a native app, you need to convince users to devote precious storage and bandwidth, before they even use your application. They must be willing to sit through the download and install process. Then they have to keep it around, even if they don't use it that often.
Web applications have no such barrier. You can use them almost instantly...