Progressive web app

[2] PWAs were introduced from 2016 as an alternative to native (device-specific) applications, with the advantage that they do not require separate bundling or distribution for different platforms.

[2] Because a PWA is delivered in the form of a webpage or website built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WebAssembly,[3] it can work on any platform with a PWA-compatible browser.

[6] At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2007, Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone would "run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards".

[7] No software development kit (SDK) was required, and the apps would be fully integrated into the device through the Safari browser engine.

Continued enhancements to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript allowed web applications to incorporate greater levels of interactivity, making native-like experiences possible on a website.

Firefox OS was based on the Gecko rendering engine with a user interface called Gaia, written in HTML5.

In December 2020, Firefox for desktop abandoned the implementation of PWAs (specifically, removed the prototype "site-specific browser" configuration that had been available as an experimental feature).

A web application is considered a PWA if it satisfies the installation criteria, thus can work offline and can be added to the device's home screen.

iOS Safari partially implements manifests, while most of the PWA metadata can be defined via Apple-specific extensions to the meta tags.

These tags allow developers to enable full-screen display, define icons and splash screens, and specify a name for the application.

Announced in 2015 and first released in March 2017, WebAssembly became a W3C recommendation on December 5, 2019[40][41][42] and it received the Programming Languages Software Award from ACM SIGPLAN in 2021.

[47] A 2018 review published by Forbes, found that users of Pinterest's PWA spent 40% more time on the site compared to the previous mobile website.

Microsoft Store publishes some qualifying PWAs automatically (even without app authors' requests) after discovering them via Bing indexing.