
Let’s Take This Offline - Dive Into HTML 5 - pixelcort
http://diveintohtml5.org/offline.html
======
alttab
I can see the possibility of a framework to take away the complexity of the
manifest and the online/offline status - but this is most definitely the basis
of webOS, or something very similar.

"Downloading an app" is simply going to the web page when you are online
initially, and then adding a (possibly automatically) shortcut to the
"desktop."

~~~
masklinn
> "Downloading an app" is simply going to the web page when you are online
> initially, and then adding a (possibly automatically) shortcut to the
> "desktop."

FWIW, that's also what you do to pull a web app locally with an iPhone (+ then
"Add to Home Screen").

Issue is that _there is no visible indication that a webapp can be used
locally_ (as far as I've seen anyway). A nice demo has been glyphboard
(<http://mrgan.com/gb/>) which, when locally installed, provides an app with
various "rare" unicode characters (☃, ♪ or ☮ for instance) which you can
copy/paste into some other application, but when getting on the original page,
nothing in the phone's UI itself tells you there is a local component, the
site itself has to point it out.

Another thing I'm not too sure about is the updating: according to the dive
page, when the browser encounters a manifest of an (locally) existing
application, it checks if that manifest is younger than the one it already
has. But if what we're opening is the _local_ applications, does it try to
check the remote manifest or not? It does seem that the local Glyphboard
accesses the original website when I open it (or tries to anyway) according to
the iPhone Simulator, but is it how it's supposed to do?

~~~
alttab
These are all technical points that, while perfectly legit, are smaller than
the problem at hand.

It doesn't really matter if you know its "online" or "offline", because thats
as easy as a status indicator. It doesn't really matter what the manifest
logic is from this high of a level - that can be ironed out.

It would be my intuition to say its more important to get a prototype working
(ala WebOS/iPhone) for insta-downloaded-web-apps and see what the actual
problems are technically, and for the users, before speculating what could
slow us down before we even begin.

~~~
masklinn
I don't think the UI issue of knowing whether a web application can be locally
installed is a small oner no. It is in fact a huge one, especially in the
light of most users not being aware this concept is even possible. It's also
not very technical at all.

And the issue of update is also an important one, users have been taught that
new versions just happen without having to do anything, it's vital that local
web applications behave correctly for that as well.

> It doesn't really matter if you know its "online" or "offline"

I don't think I said anything about on/off line, did I?

> It would be my intuition to say its more important to get a prototype
> working

What prototypes? Local web applications work right now on all three modern,
webkit-based mobile platforms. The problem is very much the first one I
pointed out, namely how does the user know that he can _install_ a web
application.

------
dasboot
45 points and no comments?

I've been playing around with html5 local storage, and it's kind of cool for
speeding up some operations by caching data that is frequently used, but like
any caching, expiration is still potentially tricky.

Also, the really hard and awesome part for me is syncing/merging online-
offline - a standard(s) solution for that would be a real killer app enabler.
(Because we all are not online 100% of the time, even if only due to spotty
reception or on planes, and it sucks not to be able to access your data).

