PWA vs Desktop Web App

Resources & Tutorials
1

@Ben, @jeremy and the rest of Team Adalo, thanks for building an incredible product. A brief question:

Besides, being able to also push PWA’s as native mobile apps, are there any differences between building a PWA and a Desktop Web App? Examples could be performance, domain settings, ‘add to homescreen’ pop-up or features.

If so, I (and presumably others) would truly appreciate a list of the differences.

Thanks,
Peter

2

Hi Peter,

PWAs

  • Show as apps inside of a phone when viewed on a desktop

  • Prompt the user to add to their home screen on iOS

Desktop Web Apps

  • Allow you to have and customize the path of your app’s URL (as in app.example.com/path)
  • Fill the full width of the browser window on desktop
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3

Thanks a lot, Ben. Just to be sure:

When you say ‘show as apps inside of a phone when viewed on a desktop’ it would be a view similar to the attached?

Skærmbillede 2020-04-01 kl. 15.53.46
Skærmbillede 2020-04-01 kl. 15.53.461440×736 120 KB

1 Like
4

Yep, that’s it exactly.

1 Like
5

Hi Ben,

You mention the ability to customize the path of my app’s URL when building as a desktop web app. Could you please share/link to details on how to do this?

Thanks a lot,
Peter

6

On the web-app click on the publish icon (bottom left nav bar) and then you’ll see your custom domain and a input field just below that where you can set the path to be yoururl.com/xyz - but these are not going to be friendly routing per pages.

Also on the PWA note that you can not currently get notifications on PWAs

7

The main distinction between a mobile app and a progressive web app is that a mobile app is intended to run on a mobile device, but a progressive web app is written to run in a browser: the web page loads - the app is active.