The Washington Post introduces new Progressive Web App experience

At the Google I/O developer conference today, The Washington Post demonstrated a new high-performance web experience that allows stories to load immediately and features rich offline reading capabilities.

With Progressive Web App (washingtonpost.com/pwa), The Post is testing a separate mobile web experience built with new technology that functions and performs like a native app. As the user engages with Post content, PWA downloads in the background creating frictionless, uninterrupted reading.

“We embrace technological innovation at The Post, and any technology that allows us to offer a superior experience to our readers is a priority,” said Shailesh Prakash, Chief Product and Technology Officer for The Washington Post. “Readers want instant load times, and the combination of Google’s AMP and Progressive Web App technologies allows us to offer a game-changing experience for the mobile web.”

The demo site is accessible through any browser by visiting washingtonpost.com/pwa. Also, after the release of the demo, users can experience the Progressive Web App when reading a Post AMP article and clicking through to the PWA link when it appears in the menu.

In addition, The Post’s Progressive Web App icon can be added to an Android or iOS user’s home screen through the phone’s browser.