Introduction to Magento PWA Studio
Magento PWA Studio from Adobe Commerce has transformed the way customers use web apps to interact with eCommerce brands. Magento PWA Studio redefines performance optimization with responsive design strategies. Brands employing Magento PWA Studio or other PWA development tools for Magento deliver a faster page load time and consistent user experience across different devices.
Magento PWA Studio allows developing PWAs with a packaged suite of tools and libraries, and that too, at a lower cost. Easy and quick implementation of Magento PWA Studio creates an engaging shopping experience. Furthermore, brands can take advantage of a reliable progressive web app framework that’s rigorously developed and tested to support brands tapping into PWA technology.
Table of contents
- Why use open source for PWA development?
- Magento PWA Studio
- Advantages of Magento PWA Studio
- Disadvantages of Magento PWA Studio
- Top 6 PWA development tools for Magento
- Conclusion
PWA technology is leading the charge in the ascend of mobile commerce. However, brands are yet to uncover the true potential of progressive web apps.
Let’s get straight into exploring the reasons for using open source progressive web app frameworks for PWA development. Furthermore, we have also listed the top 6 PWA development tools for Magento. We’ll also cover the features, benefits, and disadvantages of different PWA development tools.
Why use open source for PWA development?
Open-source software allows users to view, alter, and distribute its source code for any purpose. The core advantage of open source software is that it gives full access to its source code. If you’re missing any functionality, you can develop it matching your needs. Moreover, open-source software is free, offering higher security and scalability benefits. Open-source software is built around flexibility and personalization, solving challenges and limitations of Saas.
Open source is a dominant player in building commercial tools for PWA; one reason for making web apps progressive. A combination of open source and commercial cloud solutions enables you to build a robust and customizable progressive web app.
Magento PWA Studio
The Magento 2 PWA Studio offers a set of development tools for supporting developers to develop and maintain a PWA storefront on top of the Magento 2.3 responsive website. It is specifically designed for Magento 2 platforms, uses powerful and best frameworks for PWA and tools, such as UPWARD, and shares the Magento server.
Magento PWA Studio, introduced by Magento, enables merchants to optimize their stores by implementing elements of progressive web apps (PWAs). Furthermore, merchants have access to the latest frontend architecture and open web APIs to redesign their stores with the latest standards. Magento PWA Studio comes packed with the following key packages:
- PWA Buildpack Package: It provides the primary development and maintenance tools for your PWA Studio project. The tools include PWA setup tools, configuration management tools, and extensibility framework.
- Peregrine Package: It contains components for managing state, calculating values, and fetching data from the backend.
- The Venia-UI Package: It contains React components for rendering the HTML structure of the visual or UI elements of your PWA storefront. Combined with the Peregrine package, it supports your PWA storefront with practical, easy-to-use features. Furthermore, you can choose which additional features your store needs for customization.
Advantages: What makes Magento PWA Studio stand out among other PWA development tools?
- Magento PWA Studio is always in line with architectural and development updates in Magento 2. It also follows the same release pattern as Magento 2.
- The tools offered by Magento PWA Studio are always up-to-date and come with the most extensive features and documentation.
- Magento PWA Studio puts the ease of development at the highest priority. The launch of the PWA development solution made adapting to PWA technology more accessible and faster.
- The Magento PWA Studio is a strong community always willing to help newcomers.
- PWAs built with Magento PWA Studio use GraphQL as its leading technology. Thus, PWAs built with Magento PWA Studio offer unparalleled fetching and better handling of multiple users from several sources.
Disadvantages: What makes Magento PWA Studio lag behind other PWA development tools?
- Magento PWA Studio requires your store to be on Magento 2.3 and above. However, it gives you the freedom to develop a PWA on Magento PWA Studio without having to worry about platform compatibility.
- Merchants are hesitant to use Magento PWA studio due to its incompatibility with older versions. It’s mainly due to changes in GraphQL schema between updates.
Top 6 PWA development tools for Magento
You can develop an extraordinary PWA and establish a brand name for your Magento eCommerce store with the following PWA development tools.
1) React PWA Library
Launched by Facebook in 2016, React.js is the most popular JavaScript-based library for frontend development. It’s best known for its ability to create both single-page (SPA) and multi-page applications. The primary objective of React library was to split complex UIs into reusable simpler component groups, delivering the best rendering performance possible.
Each UI component is built with JavaScript, so the codes can be used to create UIs instead of developing the app from scratch. Thus, React eliminates manual work on UI elements that keep changing frequently. It enables faster completion of the project. The React.js Library follows a component-centered approach, offering flexibility for creating user interfaces. Developers can generate server- and client-side rendered pages and API interactions with additional JS libraries such asGatsbyJS, NextJS.
Due to its high flexibility and simplicity, it is well-suited for large and heavy web apps and one of the best frameworks for Magento stores. It’s an ideal PWA app development tool as it offers improved documentation, comprehensive libraries, ecosystem support, and a strong developer community.
Focusing on the user interface, it offers a fast and easy way to develop feature-rich progressive web apps for your Magento eCommerce store. Furthermore, PWAs built with this progressive web app framework are SEO-friendly and ensure maximum reach and visibility for your Magento store.
2) Redux
Data transfer across multi-level UI components can get complicated as the web app grows bigger. Redux, a state management system offered by the React community, can solve this problem. Furthermore, this progressive web app builder works best with React. However, it can also be integrated with other JavaScript frameworks and libraries. Redux allows you to keep all states of the app in a single place called the store. Thus, the store acts as a single source for all app data.
Furthermore, it makes it easy for any UI component to directly access its required state. Redux provides developers the advantage of maintaining the state for React web apps. Redux also enables easy access to state and data transfer, clean code, and efficient testing and debugging as a companion library of React.
3) Webpack
As an open-source module bundler for Javascript, Webpack is one of the most efficient PWA development tools for implementing offline mode and network-independent functionality. Furthermore, this progressive web app builder makes it easier to build dependency graphs between CSS elements, images, fonts, and other JS files.
The dependency graphs minimize the need for dependency management. It means you don’t have to link all JS files at the bottom of your HTML page. Eventually, it reduces the volume of server calls so that static elements load faster. It offers excellent benefits in terms of page load speed and performance. Moreover, developers get better control over processing assets with Webpack.
Webpack is recommended to resolve scaling issues for complex Magento PWA storefronts. Running JavaScript on browsers without bundlers can create issues with loading too many scripts or unmaintainable scripts in a big .js file, particularly for large and heavy projects. However, Webpack comes with a drawback. This progressive web app builder doesn’t offer user-friendly documentation and only experienced developers can use it.
4) Material-UI
It is one of the most used design languages for web and mobile applications. Developed by Google in 2014, Material Design can become a great starting point for your Magento PWA project. However, their guidelines don’t cover all aspects of your PWA requirements. Moreover, a more nuanced version of Google’s Material Design, Material UI is one of the most actively maintained UI progressive web app frameworks for React applications.
Furthermore, an open-source library, Material UI, offers all available React-featured elements for your PWA projects. The UI element kits are highly customizable, with a defined color theme for your web apps. The customization functionality enables you to align your PWA design with your brand. Material UI also brings you benefits such as a quick and easy installation process, reduced load time, and more.
5) Chrome DevTools
This progressive web app framework offers developer tools directly built into the Chrome browser. It’s one of those PWA development tools that includes a debugging tool. The debugging tools allow you to inspect your web app, identify and fix issues.
Furthermore, Chrome DevTools combines different technologies in its Application tab to develop your PWA. With the application panel, developers can access technologies such as Service Workers, push notifications, web app manifest, cache storage, and more. The web app manifest view shows developers options to prompt ‘add to home screen’ events.
6) Lighthouse
It’s the final selection on our list of PWA development tools for Magento. Google provides an analysis and performance management tool for your PWA. Furthermore, you can install Lighthouse as a plugin on the Google Chrome browser and check issues before launch, measures overall PWA performance, page loading speed and ability in a slow network, SEO, mobile-friendliness, and more.
You only have to visit the PWA site on your Chrome browser and click on the Lighthouse plugin. It will get the analytics on your PWA’s performance and enhance your web app’s quality with suggestions on fixing the issues. In addition to a set of tools for web app testing, it also helps you build a web app with a seamless user experience.
The PWA development tool by Google eliminates the need to manually test to audit your web apps. Developers can perform a set of automated tests against a given URL and generate a comprehensive analysis report. The analysis reports come in a user-friendly manner, which Lighthouse Viewer allows you to share.
Conclusion
Delivering an enhanced PWA experience is the key to improving user engagement and generating more conversions. To make the most of your PWA, you must understand your requirements and different PWA development tools matching your PWA requirements. Choosing the most appropriate PWA development tool can help you stay in line with the eCommerce industry trends.
PWA development tools, if chosen wisely, can give a competitive edge to your web app, mainly when PWA development tools are exponentially growing in numbers. Furthermore, it’s also essential to stay informed about different PWA development tools and technologies for backing your PWA in performance optimization and boosting your business.
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