What is a Web App?

What is a Web App?

In recent years, we have seen how the way to surf the internet has changed radically. The time has come and gone where we have to wait to get home to catch the PC and read the latest news. Now, and with advances in technology, we have all the news within reach. The emergence of smartphones has been a real change of era but also a change in our lifestyle. Because which of us does not go on the subway or the bus to the smartphone in hand reading about everything is happening in the world? This is the main reason why many webmasters have been developing web apps for their pages as a clear need. In today’s post we will tell you what is a web app.

A web app is a website version optimized and adaptable to any mobile. In other words,it is a page that can be opened from the browser on any terminal regardless of operating system. This optimization is possible thanks to HTML5 and CSS3.

The main advantage they have is their ability to adapt to any mobile device, as mentioned above. It is enough that the device has an updated mobile browser like Chrome or Safari. Now, in truth, to display the page correctly on different platforms is necessary to include a fragment of special codes for each of them. But there is more, this type of apps does not occupy memory of your mobile phone because it is not an app that you can download from the Market Places, no need updates because you will always access the latest version of the page as any webpage; not being a native application, resource consumption of the device is minimum. Therefore, it does not affect smartphone’s performance.

Below, we show you an example of Financial Times web app, which became famous for its controversy with Apple.

Web app ejemplo

One of the cons is since they are not an app as such, they lose the possibility of appearing in the market places and use them as a form of promotion and distribution; to use it requires internet connection; not being native can not take advantage of mobile resources such as geolocation, push notifications and the usability is inferior.

Using or not using web app?

It depends on the size of your project, the objectives and economic resources. From Qode, we recommend web app for projects with a low budget or companies that simply want to bring the user to their website but not for projects that require features that exploit the capabilities of mobile devices.

Commom questions about web apps

  • A web app has an icon launch? No, it doesn’t, because it is not a native or hybrid application.
  • Can I download a Web App on Android and iOS? You can see it from the browser on Android, iOS or Windows Phone, but you can’t download from Google Play, App Store or Windows Marketplace.
  • Can I use my smartphone features with a web app? Being an optimized mobile web that is opened from the browser does not access the phone’s capabilities.

In short, when we decide if we want a web app or a native app we need to assess the demands of our company to see if it really worth trusting in a web app.

If you want more information about this topic, please do not hesitate to contact our development team and we’ll respond as soon as we can.

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