Progressive web app vs Moodle Mobile App

Progressive web app vs Moodle Mobile App

by Jaco-Louis Kruger -
Number of replies: 1

Good day all

I would like to know what the arguments would be for, and against, using a progressive web app for our Moodle site, rather than using the Moodle Mobile App?

I developed a custom branded Moodle App a while ago and we were very excited about the functionality of the app. However, we encountered several challenges.

Some of the challenges we encountered include:
1. Question types used from plugins, are not always supported in the Moodle app, therefore we encouraged students to rather complete quizzes in their browsers and not the mobile app. This caused students to mostly just use their mobile device browsers and not the app.
2. Maintainability of a custom branded app is a bit of a challenge, where a progressive web app will "always" be up to date, due to basically being a browser-wrapper in app form.

I would like to know if you have any advice as to mitigate these issues, as we are considering replacing the mobile app with a progressive web app.

Kind regards
Jaco-Louis

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In reply to Jaco-Louis Kruger

Re: Progressive web app vs Moodle Mobile App

by Juan Leyva -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Jaco,

I recently viewed a presentation about this, https://assets.moodlemoot.org/sites/77/20180704162809/Day2_DRAFT_turning_moodle_pwa.pdf

You could technically do it, but it will be a LOT of work and apart from that:

- You won't be able to do the intensive caching the app does

- It won't work offline as the app does (for example, SCORM module downloads and unzip the package for offline)

- You won't be able to download complete courses/sections for offline

- Push notifications will stop working (you will have to implement your own solution)

- Same for local notifications, you will have to create your own implementation

- Some functionalities will behave differently, like opening files directly with the native app

And I suppose there will be more issues...