News
Kony Targets Low-Code Progressive Web Apps
- By David Ramel
- November 30, 2018
Kony, a major player in the mobile application development platform (MADP) space, has added the capability to create Progressive Web Apps with its low-code tooling.
Created 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 claim, "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."
Kony earlier this month announced an update to its low-code Kony AppPlatform to help those application leaders do exactly that.
Aubrey Gross, a content manager at the company, said "we are the first vendor to support enterprise-grade, low-code PWA development for mission-critical apps," in announcing the new functionality.
Key benefits to customers, the company said, include: speed of development boosted by the drag-and-drop visual application design canvas and other low-code tooling; enterprise-grade security, reliability and performance; and lower cost through the reuse of existing Web development skills and low-code tools.
PWAs were introduced in 2015 by Alex Russel, who enumerated the following attributes to the new class of applications:
- Responsive: to fit any form factor
- Connectivity independent: Progressively-enhanced with Service Workers to let them work offline
- App-like-interactions: Adopt a Shell + Content application model to create appy navigations & interactions
- Fresh: Transparently always up-to-date thanks to the Service Worker update process
- Safe: Served via TLS (a Service Worker requirement) to prevent snooping
- Discoverable: Are identifiable as "applications" thanks to W3C Manifests and Service Worker registration scope allowing search engines to find them
- Re-engageable: Can access the re-engagement UIs of the OS; e.g. Push Notifications
- Installable: to the home screen through browser-provided prompts, allowing users to "keep" apps they find most useful without the hassle of an app store
- Linkable: meaning they're zero-friction, zero-install, and easy to share. The social power of URLs matters.
Pricing and other information is available here.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.