The First Set of PWAs Land on the Microsoft Store
- Mehedi Hassan
- Apr 07, 2018
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62
Back in February, Microsoft confirmed its plans for bringing Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to Windows 10. At the time, the company said it will start crawling the web for high-quality PWA apps and bring them to the Microsoft Store as standalone applications.
As promised, we started seeing some new PWAs on the Microsoft Store starting late last month when Twitter replaced its native UWP app with its new PWA app on the Microsoft Store. In addition to Twitter, Microsoft has started releasing some other PWAs on the Microsoft Store, as first spotted by Italian blog Aggiornamenti Lumia. The first set of PWAs on the Microsoft include popular UK-based online shopping service ASOS, Skyscanner, Men’s Wearhouse, SDN, and a couple of other apps shown in the screenshot above.
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These new PWAs on the Microsoft Store are essentially the regular websites wrapped inside an application. Unlike the Twitter PWA, however, some of these apps don’t seem to be making use of the main PWA features such as push notifications. But that shouldn’t be too much of a problem as PWAs can be updated just like regular websites without needing to actually update the app on the Microsoft Store. After all, the whole point of bringing PWAs to the Microsoft Store is to expand its collection of apps, and not really about the native features — in other words, regular users will continue to interact with these apps just like a regular app without knowing what’s happening behind the scenes.
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Conversation 62 comments
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#260601"><em>In reply to BigM72:</em></a></blockquote><p>I don't know if they can use Live Tiles or not but if they could, that would mean that the PWA wouldn't run identically on all systems or perhaps not run at all on a non-Windows platform. This is one of the fundamental problems with all "can run anywhere" schemes. You have to constrict the design of the software so it doesn't use any capabilities that aren't shared by all the platforms you want to run on.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#260775"><em>In reply to Jeremy_Petzold:</em></a></blockquote><p>A "significant code base to be used across platforms" has always been the standard approach for cross-platform development, but it doesn't eliminate the extra effort required to support multiple platforms.</p><p><br></p><p>In practice you can't always wrap platform-specific functions with a generic function call. Following that course leads to TheBigFunctionThatDoesEverything().</p><p><br></p><p>Whether the platform-specific characteristics are embodied in code or in data structures doesn't matter, they are still there. What you end up with is platform-specific "stuff" residing in a common set of files. This is cross-platform coupling with all the problems that such coupling brings.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#260445"><em>In reply to Usman:</em></a></blockquote><p>"a single code base that works everywhere."</p><p><br></p><p>There's never been such a thing and there never will be. </p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#260640"><em>In reply to Jules_Wombat:</em></a></blockquote><p>At this point any money Microsoft spends on mobile will be a waste. All of our family phones are Windows Phones yet I recognize the handwriting on the wall.</p>
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xperiencewindows
<blockquote><a href="#260667"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p>Little late to be recognizing the handwriting on the wall…Windows Mobile has been completely removed from the microsoft website. Windows Mobile has been dead for over a year now..time to switch.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#261013"><em>In reply to xperiencewindows:</em></a></blockquote><p>Are you assuming that I bought those phones last week? For those of us with restricted budgets "time to switch" is usually when the product stops working. </p><p><br></p><p>You'd love my 1999 Ford Explorer I bought a year ago for $1000 because I needed a second vehicle. Most of the 20th century options don't work, but it still moves which is sufficient.</p>