Progressive Web Apps: An Analysis of Its Capabilities and Limitations
Utshaw, Rafin Akther (2025)
2025
Master's Programme in Computing Sciences and Electrical Engineering
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-12-19
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2025121211604
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2025121211604
Tiivistelmä
The world of tech is evolving every day and in the case of web apps new and higher standards are being practiced. Just building a basic website is not enough anymore. A website needs to be SEO friendly, it needs to have fast and assessable landing page and finally it needs to be compatible with all devices weather it’s a mobile, tablet, or desktop. With the increasing use of smartphones majority of people are now browsing the web through their phones. Many of these people prefer to browse the websites from their smartphones instead of installing and investing on native applications. But at the same time the users expect the website to be as smooth and engaging as the native applications.
This is where Progressive Web App, also known as PWA is bridging the gaps. It ensures cer-tain benchmarks are met and makes it possible for existing websites to have a native-like ex-perience without a separate native codebase.
PWA uses certain technologies such as Service Workers and Web App Manifest to boost the apps performance. By configuring them we can make any website to have features similar to native applications and also make the web app installable in any devices just like a native app. PWA uses many different strategies though the use of push notifications, offline support and caching to achieve this performance. Although it can bring most of the features of a website and a native app together, it still has limited capabilities compared to a full native application.
In this thesis, research articles, case studies, development articles have been gathered to study the features PWA provides and its limitations compared to a native application. This thesis provides an in-depth review of the capabilities of PWAs. It also covers where the capa-bilities of PWA are limited compared to a native application and the reasons behind such limi-tations. The case studies that have been gathered are some of the real world scenarios where PWA has bring a lot benefit to these companies. Finally based on all these information, at the end of the thesis some good practices of PWA has been documented which can guarantee user engagement and retentions.
This is where Progressive Web App, also known as PWA is bridging the gaps. It ensures cer-tain benchmarks are met and makes it possible for existing websites to have a native-like ex-perience without a separate native codebase.
PWA uses certain technologies such as Service Workers and Web App Manifest to boost the apps performance. By configuring them we can make any website to have features similar to native applications and also make the web app installable in any devices just like a native app. PWA uses many different strategies though the use of push notifications, offline support and caching to achieve this performance. Although it can bring most of the features of a website and a native app together, it still has limited capabilities compared to a full native application.
In this thesis, research articles, case studies, development articles have been gathered to study the features PWA provides and its limitations compared to a native application. This thesis provides an in-depth review of the capabilities of PWAs. It also covers where the capa-bilities of PWA are limited compared to a native application and the reasons behind such limi-tations. The case studies that have been gathered are some of the real world scenarios where PWA has bring a lot benefit to these companies. Finally based on all these information, at the end of the thesis some good practices of PWA has been documented which can guarantee user engagement and retentions.