News

Perfecto Tests Progressive Web Apps

• By David Ramel
• June 15, 2018

Nodding to the growing Progressive Web Apps (PWA) movement, Perfecto announced it's providing cloud-based automated testing of PWAs, which blend attributes of the Web and mobile.

Originated and chiefly championed by Google, PWAs use multiple technologies to blur the line between mobile apps and mobile Web sites, providing a hybrid solution that leverages benefits of each approach. Google called PWAs the future of the mobile Web and their growing popularity prompted a Gartner analyst to say, "Application leaders responsible for mobile app strategies must determine when -- not if -- they need to factor in PWAs as part of their overall mobile development strategy."

As developers increasingly adopt the approach, Perfecto -- the provider of a continuous testing and monitoring platform for optimizing DevOps pipelines -- said it's the first vendor with a cloud-based testing platform to support automated testing of PWAs. The company said it supports early PWA adopters who are testing PWAs across desktop and mobile platforms.

"Early reports demonstrate PWAs improve user experience, grow engagement and increase conversions," the company said in a statement this week. "PWAs offer users the ability to use sites while offline, receive push notifications and access platform features like cameras, microphone, speakers, data storage, and GPS. These capabilities are propelling PWA adoption and enriching web site experiences with capabilities previously only available with hybrid and native mobile apps."

The company said its platform supports many use cases, including: launching PWAs; test authoring and execution; testing of audio, camera and location-based scenarios; user condition test scenarios, and more.

Also, Perfecto said its tool supports executing parallel PWA tests in the cloud, on desktop and mobile platforms. One combined test report details PWA tests executed across Android, iOS, Windows and MAC OS platforms.