What is a Single-Page Application (SPA)?

Software analytics company New Relic will now support web applications built with current and future Single-Page Application (SPA) frameworks and libraries. But what is a SPA anyway?

Sometimes called One-Page Applications, SPAs are argued to offer a more responsive user experience without requiring a full-page reload to retrieve a new web page or content. In other words, SPAs load and present the user with a single HTML page of content and that content will ‘dynamically update’ as the user interacts with the application in the same way (to a degree) that an ‘app’ updates and presents new information without users having to ‘click away’ and load up a new page of content.

Microsoft’s MSDN informs us that SPAs use AJAX and HTML5 to create fluid and responsive web apps, without constant page reloads.

So back to New Relic… with New Relic Browser, software application developers are supposed to be able to gain an understanding of the performance and customer experience of their modern web applications.

“In combination with New Relic APM, the enhanced New Relic Browser monitoring for SPAs will allow customers to have end-to-end visibility of their application’s performance, from the front-end to the services it is running on,” said the firm, in a press statement.

In the goody box here we find framework-agnostic instrumentation that allows monitoring of any JavaScript framework of choice, including Angular, React, Ember, Backbone, or even custom frameworks.

Reporting on SPA route-change performance enables programmers to track the transition of how the user went from one view to another view, alongside traditional page load performance.

“Bionic’s platform enables marketers to build dynamic, multi-channel digital media plans for their customers. The use of single-page applications allow us to deliver a seamless workflow for our customers, but were a black box for us in being able to pinpoint performance issues,“ said John Swindell, vice president, operations, Bionic Advertising Systems. “New Relic Browser’s support for single-page applications is key to what we’re doing at Bionic and implementing it within our application was very easy. We now have insight into the performance of route changes in the application allowing us to optimize and ultimately create the best end-user experience.”

You can browse and play with a whole set of Single-Page Applications at https://onepagelove.com/gallery/application

Well, do you?