My final year project

What better way to simultaneously kick off my first blog post and archive my final year dissertation. If you feel compelled to chip away at the 10,000-word piece then you can find the paper at the below link. Otherwise, the following abstract is a good summary of what I decided to focus my project on to enhance my skillset within web development and successfully achieve a first-class honours degree.

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Abstract:

The last couple of years have been particularly good for web development. The introduction of new technologies, frameworks, and methodologies is exciting, to say the least. In recent years JavaScript has quickly transitioned into the most popular programming language on the web (Sun, Bonetta, Humer & Binder, 2018, p. 196). Meanwhile a new term: ‘Progressive Web App’ (PWA) has been gaining traction, originally proposed by google back in 2015 (Cardieri & Zaina, 2018, p. 1). At present, the prevalence of mobile phones around the globe is monumental. Here in the UK alone, around 93% of the population own a smartphone (Kuss et al, 2018, p. 141). These users also spend more time on their smartphones than any other device, and as a result, the use of smartphone applications has risen significantly. This has had a major influence within the industry, creating a conscious shift towards a mobile-first approach which is now considered the industry standard. However, implementing responsive design is notoriously difficult and costly upfront (Mullins, 2015, p. 6). This in turn has created a high demand for a solution that can bridge the gap between multiple devices whilst retaining high levels of quality and bringing costs down.

As PWA’s become increasingly popular, claiming to solve some key issues within the industry, now is the perfect time to conduct some research around the area. This report will aim to find out exactly what they are alongside the benefits or drawbacks of this technology in comparison to conventional methods. A PWA will be developed to discover and conclude first-hand whether they are indeed the revolutionary technological development users and developers have been looking for in this mobile-first generation.