First introduced to the market just several years ago (the name “Progressive Web Apps” was coined [1] by Google in 2015), today progressive web applications (PWA) continue to gain popularity among businesses of all sizes thanks to a handful of undeniable strengths of this technology, such as increased page load speed, lower costs of development and maintenance, better customer engagement and higher conversion rates.  As all the benefits of using PWAs are getting increasingly evident, more and more companies are adopting them and choose to go with a PWA instead of a native app when building their applications. Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Lancôme, Pinterest, Forbes, Financial Times. Smashing Magazine and many other big global brands have been utilizing PWAs for years now, and with great success. PWAs are a powerful legacy application modernization solution as well. In this article we will look at how you can build progressive web apps using hybrid low-code.

How to create powerful PWAs with minimum resources? 

Small and medium-sized businesses also realize massive benefits from implementing the progressive apps. Even though significantly lower costs have always been one of the main advantages of PWAs (the cost of developing a progressive web app on average is 3-4 times lower compared a native app budget), new tools and technologies that are available today, in 2021, make designing, building and deploying Progressive Web Apps more accessible and easier than ever before, minimizing time and resources you need to complete a PWA Development Project.  Visual LANSA with its supporting solutions is such a tool, allowing organizations and individual developers to combine speed and efficiency of low-code with flexibility and scalability of PWAs.  LANSA minimizes the time and effort required to build a PWA, which then can be deployed to the cloud almost instantly in just a few clicks. Let us explain how Visual LANSA provides businesses with an advanced way to build and deploy powerful PWAs quickly, single-handedly and without the need to know programming languages or have coding skills. Learn how to modernize solutions in this article about IBM AS400 system.

Create a LANSA Web App with pre-made app templates

Visual LANSA offers its users a number of Sample Applications, which are basic templates for the most popular and in-demand types of apps applied by organizations. These templates are customizable and can be used as a foundation to create your own app with minimum time and effort.  Here’s a list of LANSA’a Sample apps.   

• Contacts App

A simple contacts app that captures data about people, communication details, and can generate an email, initiate a phone call or send a message.  

• LANSA Exchange

LANSA Exchange provides real-time foreign exchange and cryptocurrency information by accessing real-time data from global exchanges via REST APIs.  

• Tools Shop App

Tools Shop is an online shopping app template with separate sections for garden, hand, and power tools. You can change and add categories in the process of customizing the template.   

• Cost Estimator App

Cost Estimator manages the process of estimating the cost of floor coverings. The app uses the captured data and price details associated with the chosen floor covering to generate an estimate.  

• Accident Assessment App

Accident Assessment is designed to be used by motor vehicle accident assessors. It captures accident details including driver, vehicle, accident date/time, location, photos and voice recording.  

• Expenses App

Expenses is an app that allows employees to track expense claims and approvals from mobile or desktop devices.  

• Tasks App

Tasks is a tool for managing task creation, editing, allocation and tracking. The app allows managers to create tasks, assign them to specific people and track the progress remotely.   

• Destinations App

Destinations presents travel destination information laid out in multiple columns as postcards. Each postcard includes a photo and destination description. This template can serve as a good example of how to design an imaginative user interface that engages the person viewing the page.  

• Timeline App

This app presents travel destination information laid out as a sequence of cards on a timeline. Each card links to a date and includes a photo and description.  

Turn LANSA Web App into a PWA

It is extremely easy to take a web app created in Visual LANSA and turn it into a Progressive Web Application.  In fact, we made a video tutorial showing how to transform an existing LANSA web app into a PWA. The video is only one and a half minutes long as it literally takes just a few clicks to enable a PWA in LANSA.   

• Enable Progressive Web App in Visual LANSA 15+

 

Deploy your PWA to the cloud 

Finally, once a PWA is created, LANSA provides its users with supporting tools that make it easy to deploy and manage the app in the AWS cloud.  Amazon Web Services is the most popular cloud web hosting platform that provides businesses, non-profits, and governmental organizations with a number of low-cost options to host their websites and web applications.  LANSA Scalable License Win2012 was designed as the basis for quick and simple creation of a LANSA stack running a Progressive Web App. It provides users with an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and a CloudFormation template for constructing a production ready Windows stack to deliver LANSA web, mobile and desktop capabilities. Users can deploy an application to this production environment from any Visual LANSA IDE including the AWS Visual LANSA Development Environment Web Application Framework. Learn more about how your business can utilize progressive web applications in this article about IBM Transportation Management System.

LANSA and PWA — match made in heaven

Low-code platforms such as LANSA are a perfect fit for PWA development. The user interface is created through drag-and-drop design, often with standards like Google Material Design built in. In addition to saving time creating the visuals of your app, LANSA automatically handles all technical issues, allowing the developer to focus on creating solutions instead of spending time on coding functionality and learning about the intricacies of PWAs.  As a result, low-code developers using LANSA can quickly create enterprise-level PWAs, while businesses integrating these solutions into their processes witness high ROI from their investments and considerably decreased costs of development and maintenance of their apps.  To learn more about Visual LANSA and how it can help your business to start utilizing the latest cutting edge technologies today, contact sales.   [1] https://medium.com/@slightlylate/progressive-apps-escaping-tabs-without-losing-our-soul-3b93a8561955