

Don’t Make Your Apps Offline Stupid - Ultima
http://adamkochanowicz.com/2011/dont-make-your-apps-offline-stupid/

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prodigal_erik
200 OK, Content-Length: 0. Is this some kind of postmodern statement about
being offline, or robustness advice from an author whose servers should be
returning errors but aren't?

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bunnyhero
The blog post confused me until I realized that the author meant "Don't Make
Your Apps Offline-Stupid," rather than "Don't Make Your Apps Offline, Stupid."

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gte910h
Offline use is just one in a bevy of features an app could have. It's not
often the best one to spend your time on.

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andybak
I hate to be the one to say 'RTFA' but he specifically mentions in this case
that the app _already_ stored the messages offline but then prevented you
accessing them with a full-screen 'offline' message. His point was that they
actually went out of their way to prevent you access to already stored
messages.

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gte910h
Just storing it locally isn't the only thing you have to do to enable offline
access.

You have to programmatically remove/disable/enable all buttons that edit state
(or you have to locally cache actions). You also have to make sure pages
linked to from that page, that might not have locally stored data, also don't
need locally stored data to function.

Then on top of all this, you have to test all of the app with online access
coming back at all possible screens for all possible edit boxes, etc. Then you
have to do it for offline access going away for every single edit box, etc.

No matter what he _says_ he knows about the data model, I'm doubting he
cracked open the app archive on his phone and went looking for a SQL database.
I'm not sure he is really qualified to make statements about what is and isn't
local.

But he (and you) are incorrect if you think no work goes into moving from
their old technique to their new technique.

I'm just saying, all the above is a LOT of work compared to other features an
app may not have, and those features may be more important to MOST people, not
just people who go into spotty connection areas a lot (which not everyone
does, for instance, not everyone works in a building with elevators and
parking garages, and have near constant 3g coverage).

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anebg
Oh the irony

