Google Announces New Features in Firebase for Web Apps

With more than 2 million – monthly active – apps operating on Firebase, Google plans on making the platform all the more useful for the Android app developers. 

There is hardly an Android app developer who would not have worked on Firebase and used it for a plethora of its features surrounding – implementation of Google Analytics for getting into app usage, improving users retention through targeted messaging, performing A/B testing through remote configuration or simply track the crashes through Crashlytics. 

Today, Google has expanded the suite of useful offerings from mobile app development to web app development. The tech giant has unveiled a whole new set of features addition in Firebase specifically on the Web Apps front.

The key highlights of the announcement included App distribution, Google Analytics support for web apps, and Extensions. But these were not the only announcements made in the Google’s Firebase Summit. 

Here is a synopsis of the announcements:

A. Firebase Extensions

Through the new Firebase Extension feature, you will be able to lower the time you spend on writing boilerplate code. The Firebase Extensions are a form of pre-packaged bundle of codes which handle several tasks like resizing of thumbnails, adding people to the email lists, shortening URLs, etc. 

Google said that Extensions will solve a series of evergreen problems – something that will validate the importance and value of Firebase for Startups.  

B. Expanding Analytics

Analytics integration support has been around for Firebase users for quite some time now. But, Google has now expanded the facility to web apps as well. Web app developers will now be able to record the user properties and record events just like their Android app developers counterpart. They too will be able to do a closed funnel analysis and identify the path users took in their apps to become a customer. 

The developers would also be able to create audiences in Analytics and then target them via Firebase Cloud Messaging. 

C. App Distribution

With the help of Firebase app distribution, you will be able to manage the distribution of the pre-release versions of the app for both iOS and Android. You will also be able to manage multiple testing groups, upload apps for new distributions, and even add release notes from dashboard itself. The functionality also provides a CLI support for Gradle, Fastlane, and Firebase CLI. 

D. Emulator Suite, Open-Source SDK, Updates Predictions, and more

There are a bunch of other new features that are being added in the Firebase for Web Apps:

• Greater support for the server-side and client side SDKs, Realtime database triggered functions, hot reloading in all the Security Rules changes, a new command for tightening Continuous Integration (CI) for the Firebase Emulator Suite.
• Firebase Predictions UI will now show a ‘full spectrum of users’ predicted behaviours’ 
• Google Cloud’s Access and Identity management will now be made available to help create roles for limiting the access to project. 
• Developers will now be able to add images in the notifications sent through Firebase Cloud Messaging. 

These features together are poised to make Firebase a go-to Backend-as-a-Service platform for both web and mobile app developers, across the globe.