Is Progressive Web Apps accessible only from mobile, how to deploy

Hey guys,

Have you ever heard about Progressive Web Apps? I just hear about it today and I scoured every web corner to understand what it is. The information is so scant.

All I know is it's standalone app on the web and accessible via mobile.

The example of this feature is https://www.washingtonpost.com/pwa/

It cannot be accessed via desktop. Data on the web seems to fetch instantly once you tap on the link.

Do you have any idea how to they deployed it.

Thanks,

 

http://blog.ionic.io/what-is-a-progressive-web-app/ this is a good intro to PWA.
It might be a step forward, but currently, a lot of the tech needed is limited by browsers, OS and other factors, so it's not fully "there" yet. It might be, though, in the near future.

 

Thank you,

The link I provided shows content instantly. How could it be that fast?

Impressive.

 

prefetching, caching, servers with omph to spare, probably a good use of CDNs?

I don't really know that much about the tech behind it myself, but fetching and serving data is no different from serving data via other tech - there will always be a need to actually fetch the data before you can show it, and ways to reduce the waiting time for the user - that in itself shouldn't differ that much with PWA.

 

Whatever the technology they use, they must have known how to pre-fetch data for serve instantly.

Just two weeks ago I thought HTTP/2 is already most awesome. This technology is awesomer.

It is definitely where I headed to. Thanks for the input.

 

Well... it loads fast, and looks good, but it doesn't seem like they're using any fancy functionality - like notifications, or any other type of interfacing with the phone used. At least nothing like that shows up here - no notifications, no asking about location, etc. It loads fast, by all means, but I can see a loading "frame" when changing categories (all elements are there, but images doesn't load instantly, takes about a second).

I'm guessing some of the speed is due to images being set up to match the size needed to fit phone-screens - hence they're not that big. Also, the text is probably delivered on page load, just not shown. It's a very clean site, with very little "obtrusive content" - no ads, no nothing, which of course also leads to a very quick site.

 

Wow!

You bring observation to that hawk-eye level. What a man.