The Great G has announced several novelties for web apps that will allow them to be more functional in the mobile environment. These are Google's improvements for web apps that will arrive next year.
Google will improve web apps to be closer to native applications
Web applications are gaining relevance little by little. Gone are the days when mobile websites were simple and poorly optimized. Nowadays, responsive design dominates the market and allows the experience to be unique across all devices. This has led, in turn, to seek to offer more functions directly from the browser, without the need for a native application. Now Google has decided to open the doors for web applications to go further. They will achieve this through new APIs.
Web Share Target
Thanks to this API, web apps can appear as a target in the Android Share menu. So you can share something directly to them. This will benefit, for example, social networks like Twitter.
Wake lock
This API prevents the device from turning off the screen, something that will benefit web apps dedicated to video. You won't have to be tapping the screen every little bit to keep seeing something.
WebHID
With this API you can interact directly with devices connected via USB or Bluetooth. Although it is difficult to think of video games hosted directly on a website that require a controller, it is an interesting possibility.
Writeable File API
This API allows web apps to access local files on a smartphone, as long as the user grants permission. This completes the foundation for the necessary pillars for web apps to reach native applications and to do much more.
It will not be exclusive to Chrome: any browser will benefit from these measures
Best of all, these improvements will not be limited to Google Chrome. The company opens up these standards for other companies like Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple to benefit from them. This way you get feedback on how it works and reach more people. In the same way, it helps to turn it into a standard that benefits consumers more, creating an ecosystem of web apps on any device. Of course, all these improvements will be implemented over the months and at a surely slow pace. Therefore, it will be necessary to be patient.